BPD, Triangulation, and Non-Monogamy: What counts as emotional abuse?

[Feeling Foggy]

[Part 1]

Hello, everyone,

New member of the club, about 6 months out of an absolutely shattering discard by a woman who I’m now pretty confident has undiagnosed quiet or impulsive BPD, and quite possibly NPD comorbidities. For reference, I’m early 40s and she’s late 30s, and our relationship lasted 1.5 years to the week.

I’m writing this because I’m genuinely interested in the thoughts of the community, but also because if some other poor soul is going through what I did, perhaps a snippet of my story will help them to make sense of their own. That, and I’m still questioning myself, despite months of reflection, reading, and therapy. Provided that I’m not insane, it would help to hear that. Fair warning: this is a long one--a novella, really--because the devil is in the details. (I’ll have to post in installments for that reason) Also, there is some (non-graphic) discussion of sex and non-monogamy here.

Some folks would say that when a relationship ends, the most important thing is to look forward and to work on yourself–not to get too focused on you ex and trying to figure them out. Easier said than done. And part of the process of focusing on yourself is figuring out what you need to own and how you’re going to show up in future relationships. And a big part of that is the question of “healthy boundaries.” What seems like a healthy boundary to you might seem controlling to someone else. What seems like a healthy boundary to them might seem disrespectful to you. Sometimes it’s about finding the right fit between two people, but sometimes it’s about what kind of behavior is considerate, reasonable, and respectful of a partner. And that’s not always obvious.

My uBPD exGF (hereafter GF) would be “high-functioning.” Successful and impressive career, outwardly presents as normal, has a small number of close friends she’s known for 20 years–and a circle of more casual acquaintances orbiting around, almost all of them male. She is very sweet and fun-loving, almost childlike in her unbridled enthusiasm for life. When the relationship was good, she really brought out the best in me, I felt.

There are many things I could post about, but for this one I want to talk about these male friends, one of whom became my replacement. I’m pretty progressive and laid-back on friendships, and there were a few times in our relationship when we tried out non-monogamy, so I was OK with/gave her permission to sleep with other men–although there was just one that I know of, and that happened three times in total. I put this up front to highlight that I’m not inherently a jealous, controlling type–or, at least, I don’t *think* I am. Jealousy has never been an issue for me in any prior relationship, including a long marriage with a very attractive woman who was constantly being hit on by other men, and who at one point cheated on me. But by the end of this relationship I felt insecure, jealous, untrusting, and habitually disrespected. I wasn’t always my best self, but I felt like I continually had my boundaries eroded, which eventually pushed me over the edge. 

One of the friends in question was an ex-boyfriend, “E.” Regarding E I have the most data points in this story, although to my knowledge she never slept with him or even flirted with him; it was more of a lack of enforcing boundaries that bothered me over time. GF was dating E non-exclusively (or so I was told!) when I started seeing her. About 6 weeks later, I suggested to her that we stop seeing other people, and at this time she told me that she “wasn’t cut out for monogamy,” because she had never been able to have her physical and emotional needs met by one person. The physical piece seemed the main problem: exGF is hypersexual and has an insanely high sex drive–high enough that despite literally hours of sex every time I’d see her, she always wanted more. Even if we went for 3, 4 hours–even 7 hours once–she’d want more. And she is highly experimental and into a lot of kink and BDSM (though I had yet to experience this all first-hand at the time when we had this discussion). She said that in every prior relationship, her partner’s libido flagged while hers remained steady or even increased, and that she felt like a burden to them by the end, that she was climbing all over them and that it annoyed them. She also said her last partner (E) wasn’t dominant or experimental enough for her, and that there were things she wanted to try that he wasn’t really into.

This kicked off a period of discussion for a few weeks where we discussed pros/cons of ethical non-monogamy (ENM). I had never been in a non-monogamous relationship before and didn’t have an intellectual problem with it, but at the time I wasn’t emotionally comfortable with GF sleeping with other people. But she relented when I drew a line in the sand and said that she wanted to be monogamous with me, in fact that she was “all in” on monogamy. The story changed somewhat during that conversation: she said that she had always been monogamous in prior relationships, that she had been satisfied overall with her sex life in those relationships, that non-monogamy was something that she thought might be a solution moving forward, but that the motivation for wanting ENM had more to do with her fear of commitment than anything else. (She had previously expressed a fear that her relationships never seemed to work out and were doomed from the start.) So we agreed to be exclusive, and I was really excited.

I had been talking to/seeing a couple of other women at the time, and I had things broken off and wrapped up that very same day we made the decision. But it took exGF almost two weeks to break things off with E. First she said that schedules didn’t align, then she said that she was dreading the conversation because she didn’t want to hurt his feelings. Finally I had to ask her whether she was having second thoughts about being monogamous with me, because it was dragging on. She said ‘“no” and finally broke things off with him after I pressed her. As an aside, the relationship history I received regarding her and E was somewhat sketchy. They had been on-again/off-again for over a year, with a breakup and no-contact period of about six months sandwiched in between–this was her doing. At one point they were monogamous, and she said that she was in love with him at one time. But E decided that he was polyamorous, and GF said she wasn’t emotionally comfortable with polyamory, which is when she started to emotionally detach from him. However, before she met me she also had a number of casual hookups and, while she was still technically seeing E and only weeks before meeting me, had been hooking up with this other guy (“E2”) and his wife. She also said that the physical and emotional aspects of her relationship with E weren’t fulfilling for her, and that is why she no longer wanted to be with him. Obviously there were narrative threads and statements about values (monogamy vs ENM) that didn’t seem to align, but when I asked she cobbled together something vaguely approximating a coherent explanation. So I let it go.

Fast-forward a couple of months, and things are going great. We’re head over heels for each other, like I’ve never felt before. The sex is insane. Everything is amazing! Yes, she is idealizing and love-bombing me hardcore, to the point where it even made me a little uncomfortable at times. She talked about me like I walked on water. At one point I check in with her regarding how things are going and whether monogamy is still working for her, and she said yes, that she had never been as happy as she was then, and that I was fulfilling both her physical and emotional needs in a way she didn’t think was possible. She said that she didn’t think men like me existed.

Around this time we’re laying in bed one night, and her phone is next to me. It’s about 10:30pm. Her Snapchat notification goes off, and I see a message from E, which was surprising to me since I didn’t know they were still in contact. I had just assumed (perhaps naively) that they were no longer talking as they had broken up. I didn’t get upset and just asked some questions about it. She said that they texted a few days per week and that it was just idle chit-chat and stupid stuff like memes. Concerning the late hour, she said that E worked late and wasn’t available to text until later. I asked point-blank whether there was anything physical between them; she said no. I asked again whether she had any residual feelings for E, even said that it would be understandable if she did–that breaking up with someone doesn’t necessarily mean that your feelings for them go away (little did I know what I’d be in store for :/)--and that she could feel comfortable talking to me about it. She insisted that she had no feelings for him at all.

She offered to let me look at her Snapchat conversation or even to stop talking to E entirely, and said that our relationship was more important to her and that “he doesn’t mean anything to me.” This all seemed unnecessary to me, as I was OK with her having male friends, as long as everything stayed platonic and in bounds–and I said as much to her. I said that healthy relationships require trust, and that if she told me nothing was going on, then I was going to choose to trust her. However, I did ask her why she didn’t bother to tell me that they were still in contact. Her answer was that she wasn’t intentionally trying to keep anything from me or hurt me, but that it “genuinely never occurred to her that this is the sort of thing that she should tell me about.” I clarified that from my perspective, it’s a sign of respect to your partner to give them some transparency regarding the people in your life, especially exes with whom you’re in regular contact. She agreed to do so moving forward and to provide me with periodic updates of what was going on with E or anyone else.

Fast-forward another month or so. I haven’t heard much of anything about E since that night, despite her promise to be more transparent. For the most part I’m feeling good about the relationship, but every once in a while I have a nagging doubt in the back of my head about him. But when these thoughts crept up, I tamped them down as irrational and said to myself that I had no reason not to trust her. Around this time we had a periodic “relationship check-in” discussion, and she asked me if there was anything I wanted to discuss or anything that was bothering me. In the spirit of honesty I told her about my occasional nagging doubts about E, but I said to her what I wrote here–that I recognized them as irrational and didn’t think her relationship with E was an issue. That I didn’t think her untrustworthy and acknowledged it was all on my end. She told me that she wanted me to feel secure, again offered to let me look at her phone or even stop talking to E, and gave me her phone access code with the permission to look at any time. I thanked her, but again declined any of those things, as I didn’t want to set a precedent of mistrust.

Another few weeks go by and I’m at her house. Her phone is next to me, and she’s out of the room. I can’t remember why exactly, but for some reason that night I was feeling a little suspicious. Though I disliked myself for doing it, I quickly grabbed her phone, unlocked it, and brought up her Snap conversation with E. For those that don’t know the Snapchat app, all messages and photos auto-delete after 12 or 24 hours unless you save them in chat. (Perfect app if you want to hide shady behavior.) So her convo with E wasn’t long–just the last day, and everything was innocuous. But I quickly scrolled up and saw that E had saved some naked pics of her that she had sent back in December, a few weeks before she and I had started dating. Clearly there was no issue with her sending the pics when she did, but I didn’t like that they were still saved in chat and just sitting there every time either of them opened the chat. Seemed disrespectful to me and not consistent with the fact that her relationship with E was now supposed to be strictly platonic.

When she returned I told her that I had looked and what I found. I wasn’t angry and didn’t raise my voice. I just said that it bothered me and asked why they were there. She was upset that I checked her phone, even though she had previously given me permission to do so–said that she wished I had asked her first. She said she forgot that the pictures were there, but also that she did not perceive the issue with them being there. In her mind, she sent them back when she and E were dating, so she wasn’t doing anything inappropriate by leaving them there. She said that people send naked pics all of the time to their romantic/sexual partners, and that people save pics from previous lovers. She said that she had all sorts of pics from previous lovers on her Google Drive. (This was news to me.) I pointed out to her that there is a difference between exBF saving her pics on his phone, which she cannot control, and her just leaving the pics up on Snap in their ongoing chat, having the pics staring the two of them in the face every time they texted. I compared it to my keeping a pair of my ex wife’s panties and carrying them around with me every day–it would be weird, because our relationship isn’t sexual anymore.

GF agreed to delete the pics, but she didn’t understand my position, even after I explained myself. We agreed to disagree on the principle of the matter, and since I had the outcome I wanted I decided not to prolong conflict unnecessarily. I asked her if there was anything else I needed to know about, any other potential discoveries that should be outed now. She said “No,” and I said “Great. We’re good, then. Let’s move on.” And we did.

For the better part of a year there were no major, relationship-shaking incidents concerning her behavior with other men. However, beginning about 7-8 months into the relationship, she started to fret more and become more obviously destabilized. This included feeling unsupported in the relationship, distant from/disconnected from me, uneasy, worried about our future, etc. She kept a lot of these thoughts and feelings to herself, but alluded to having rapidly shifting emotions and “batPLEASE READ insane” thoughts. For my part I did my best to ask her how she was feeling and to offer what support I could, but it was difficult. She tended not to communicate with me, and when she did, she often didn’t understand what she was feeling or why–a lot of general unease or things being “off.” And when I did receive specifics, I’d do what she asked of me, and it still didn’t seem to help. In late October of 2020 (about 11 months in) there was an unexpected death in the family, and without going into details she suddenly split on me and broke up with me that day. She became a totally different person, one I had never seen before. I fell on my sword and begged her to take me back, which she did. A few days later and everything was fine. A week later she sent me a long e-mail telling me how wonderful I was and how she couldn’t think of a better person to go through life with.

At this point we had revisited ENM and had been discussing it for months, and in the fall decided to skim our toes. For a single week in early September I went online and was chatting with a few women. I never met up with anyone (GF didn’t either that I know of), and after a week I shut things down because GF became very jealous and irritable–was picking fights with me all week. She initially fought me on stopping with ENM and said that she would get comfortable with it over time, but when I insisted she said that she was happy with stopping and thought it better to take a break.

Part 2 forthcoming...

[Feeling Foggy]

Part 2

A month later she suggested that we try again, said that she had had more time to consider everything and that it would be different the second time around. (In the interim I had sent her a letter saying that I’d like to try it again at some point. I do regret sending that letter now, though I know it’s a drop in the bucket…) With my permission she hooked up with E2, and while I wasn’t feeling 100% cool with it emotionally, I took it in stride. We debriefed afterwards and things seemed OK. I did not hook up with anyone, but I did have one (terrible) dinner date and had been texting with a second person, both of which GF knew about and condoned. The day her family member passed, some of the nastiness she threw my way concerned my talking to other women, so I knew that ENM had been bothering her, despite what she told me about being OK with it. After we got back together I decided not to bring it up again.

Again a month or so goes by and she brings it up again, says that I should hook up with someone because we “needed a data point” so she could see how she’d feel about it. I expressed some hesitation after our last two attempts ended in meltdowns on her end, but she insisted, even going so far as to say that “there’s no way we’re not at least trying non-monogamy at this point; we’re non-monogamous until we aren’t”--it almost seemed like she felt compelled to try and give it to me. (In retrospect I think it was a combination of feeling like she needed to be “that cool person”--she defines herself largely through her sexuality–and also perhaps a fear that I’d leave her if she didn’t give this to me, although she never admitted to the latter. Or perhaps it was subconscious relationship sabotage. I can only wonder.) So at her urging I hook up with someone, the wife of E2, who had expressed interest in meeting me after her husband hooked up with my GF (everyone following along at home?). I didn’t enjoy myself. Chemistry wasn’t really right. In the days leading up to the hookup, GF admitted to feeling insecure and dreading the event, but when I offered to cancel she insisted that I follow-through with it. After it was over I told her that I didn’t enjoy myself and that she (GF) was an infinitely better sexual experience than my hookup partner. Since she had been feeling insecure in the leadup, I figured that this would make her feel better. But it didn’t. Inexplicably it made her angry, although she couldn’t or wouldn’t say why.

After the Snapchat incident the previous spring, there were a couple of times when GF did not tell me important things in a timely fashion, things relating to other people and ENM. I won’t go into details, but in the first case I calmly reiterated that I’d like her to let me know in a more timely fashion next time, and she agreed. In the second case she belatedly let me know about something important (and time-sensitive) just days after I had clarified with her that I wanted to know right away if the exact thing in question happened. So I got a little angry with her. It was over text, but I made my displeasure clear, and GF apologized. This was the first time in a year of dating that I can recall ever having gotten upset with her. At this point there were 4-5 times in the span of a year when she either did not tell me important information or else delayed it, and I had clarified on numerous occasions that transparency was important to me. I was laid-back about male friendships and even ENM; I just wanted honesty, transparency, and promise-keeping. Even ENM has rules to it. I felt like I wasn’t being heard. But it wasn’t a major fight that evening; more of a speedbump.

Now we’re into January 2021, and after a brief hiatus over the holidays are back at ENM. During this time the plan was for me to find someone online, while GF waited on her end, since we knew it’d be easy for her to get set up quickly. Things proceeded slowly for me and I wasn’t having a ton of luck, although I did connect with one or two people. By this time we were exactly a year into the relationship, and I’d say we were into the devaluation stage–GF was picking a lot more fights, was more critical and passive-aggressive, often out of nowhere. I was increasingly tying myself into knots trying to keep her happy, but it seemed that I couldn’t win no matter what I said or did. For a while after the breakup I thought that non-monogamy was the problem, and it was definitely a trigger, but now that I’ve put the bigger picture together I can clearly discern the idealize/devalue/discard cycle in our relationship.

There were a few times when she alluded to having paranoid thoughts about ENM, like I was trying to take advantage of her, but she wouldn’t get into specifics. And there were a few times when she indicated that she wasn’t emotionally comfortable with ENM, but just like the fall she literally insisted that we keep going, even over my objections. (I shouldn’t have acquiesced to her, but I did.) I hooked up with another person on one occasion in late February, and by the time that rolled around I did not want to go through with it on account of GF’s vacillating feelings. I knew I wouldn’t be able to enjoy myself if she wasn’t fully comfortable with everything. But she insisted that I do it. The night of, I wasn’t feeling it with this person and stopped things in the middle of “activities.” We sat on my couch and talked for a bit and then she went home. When I spoke with her afterwards, GF wasn’t relieved but angry with me that I didn’t enjoy myself. She subsequently said that she had been doing all of this emotional labor to get OK with it (most of which she didn’t tell me about), and my not enjoying myself made it seem like I was ungrateful for her efforts and that all of her emotional labor was for naught (?). And over the following days and weeks GF became angry with and resentful of me, after the fact, for doing what she literally insisted I do. (The day of the hookup, she was playing “hype man” and literally told me to “go get her, tiger”). GF was never able to let go of that resentment, even months later, and said that she had been working through it with her therapist. For my part, I stopped speaking to this other woman after that evening and never saw her again.

Around this time (early March) is when the story starts to pick up. Regarding her romantic activities with ENM, GF hooked up with that same guy from the fall (E2) twice in the spring. She was also texting/sexting with another guy, “J,” the husband of a woman I had met online and had also been texting with (stay tuned on him). The sexting with this second guy only lasted a few days, but without going into details the nature of it felt disrespectful to me. Despite still having hours of sex every time I saw her, and us ratcheting up our kink/BDSM activities over time, exGF had become progressively more preoccupied with kink as our relationship wore on, to the point where it was becoming a problem. We couldn’t just watch a movie and split a bottle of wine; every get-together had to be a multi-hour session involving lots of planning on my part, or else she wouldn’t get her “fix.” I enjoy all of that stuff quite a lot and had been right there with her in terms of experimentation, but there were times when I just wanted to have a “normal” evening and, you know, talk to each other. (I think she has a legitimate sex addiction, although I don’t think she sees it that way.)

And while GF maintained up until the end that she was still highly satisfied with our sex life–she told me many times that I took her to places she didn’t think were possible to go–there were occasional times starting about a year into the relationship when she said she felt like we had lost a step. We started at 10/10 of intensity and lust and perhaps had fallen to 9.5/10, but that small increment made a difference to her. GF needs constant attention and validation, tons of compliments that she then has trouble accepting if they’re not worded just so. Lots of sexting to me and taking pics of herself: naked, lingerie, bondage gear, playing with toys, you name it. I loved all of that stuff, but it doesn’t hit you the same way a year into the relationship after pornographic selfie #2024 as it does the first time. And I don’t think she could handle that transition into a more stable partnership, even though our sex life was still absolutely insane by any metric. That, and because our kink activities had ramped up, she wanted long sessions pretty much all of the time, which just wasn’t always feasible from my perspective. Which brings me back to J.

This guy J she connected with was a self-proclaimed “satryomaniac,” and some of their texting concerned their mutual bonding over the fact that both of them were “insatiable” and that she thought she would literally kill me with sex–but “couldn’t imagine what it’d be like if the two of them got together.” I remember reading their texts and feeling a little sick to my stomach, like this guy was being lorded over my head as superior to me. exGF also asked for my permission to send this guy some pics of her, which I granted, but I couldn’t help but note to myself that she wasn’t OK with other women sending pics to me–that had been asserted as an explicit rule from her.

That very same week–about two weeks after my ill-fated hookup, the one GF insisted upon and then got angry about–she says that she’s starting to pull back emotionally and that I am in danger of losing her. At least part of this was that she was very jealous of this other woman I was texting with, J’s wife. GF admitted to feeling very insecure about it. In retrospect I think she also was becoming enamored with J. So I sound the alarm bells and say that we should stop with the ENM, that it seemed to (again) be causing problems for us. GF agreed, and I let this woman I had been texting with know that I was stepping away. GF tells J (her husband) the same thing, but she also had another hookup planned with E2 (she had just slept with him that week) the following week that she insisted on keeping on the books because “she didn’t want to be rude and cancel on him.” (Somehow this wound up being blamed on me. It was a bizarre conversation.) So we break from ENM, and for the most part the next two months were wonderful–or so I thought. Physical intimacy was amazing, emotional intimacy felt great, and there was very little fighting or passive-aggression from exGF.

Over the past months her male friends had also started to become an issue again. Just before Xmas an old hookup partner with whom she hadn’t talked in almost 2 years reached out to her, claiming that he wanted to discuss some aspects of their “relationship” (if you can call it that) and what he was working through with his therapist. Which seemed odd, because she told me that they only hooked up once or twice, and again it was a long time in the past. She asked me if I was OK with them going on a platonic walk together in the park, just to talk, and I said sure. GF and I spoke afterwards that day, and she said that they just walked and talked. It wasn’t an issue from my end, though I had my suspicions that this guy had an ulterior motive, and sure enough he reached back out to her a month later asking for a threesome with him and his GF. But I include that anecdote here just to indicate that I wasn’t being jealous or possessive regarding her and other male friends.

There were also a handful of other guys that she used to date/hook up with, and who she kept in contact with on social media. After we had put ENM on hold in March, a second guy, an old BF, reached out to her on FB wanting to talk. Similarly to the last guy, she said that she hadn’t spoken with this other guy in quite some time, and that it was just coincidence that he reached out when he did. She said that she ignored him online, but he sent a gift to her house shortly thereafter. During this time some flowers showed up to her house, which she said were from her ex-husband, but there was no card with them, and there is mutual bad blood between her and her ex-husband, so him sending flowers seemed odd. In retrospect I don’t know if all of this was the truth or whether she was lying about some or all of it. But within a short timespan these guys seemed to come out of the woodwork, and while she told me about them–better than hiding it–she almost seemed to relish the attention.

Around this time, E comes back into the story. exGF had been in continual contact with E since I started dating her, and contrary to promises I didn’t get a lot of proactive info about that relationship. I had never met him or spoken with him. exGF and E hadn’t seen each other for over a year (she said) because of COVID, so back in March he asked to come over to her house to meet up and see her new car. She asked me whether I would be cool with that, and I said sure. (I wasn’t there.) I had been hearing E’s name come up in conversation more recently, and I asked her whether they were talking more than they used to. GF said “yes.” E had never wanted the breakup with her, and I remarked to her that I wouldn’t be surprised if E still had feelings for her and was trying to worm his way back into her life. GF agreed, but said that she didn’t have any feelings for him. I told her (we were still doing ENM at this point) that if she wanted to hook up with E, she could ask me for that; I just needed transparency and shared decision-making about what was going on. She thanked me for the offer but said she had no interest in E. The day comes and goes, and about an hour after E leaves I speak with GF about how the visit went. She fills me in on all of their various conversation topics.

Fast-forward a month or so, and she lets slip in conversation that when E had visited her that day, he confessed to still being in love with her and had propositioned her. I asked her why she didn’t tell me this, since I spoke with her that day not even an hour after he left. She told me about 10 other conversation topics, but somehow neglected to mention that one. At first she denied not telling me–said I must have misremembered–then said that she must have innocently forgotten. When I pressed her on this–how could she forget just that one detail–she admitted to not forgetting and said that while she couldn’t remember why she didn’t tell me, she must have made a conscious decision at the time not to do so, that perhaps she was scared to tell me (although why I don’t know). Then she suddenly became really angry with me and said that it didn’t matter anyway; that she “had handled it” by telling E that she wasn’t interested and that she didn’t understand why she even needed to tell me what happened. This conversation was over voice memo on Snap (not a good idea, I know), and I got really angry with her and made clear that I was thinking about ending the relationship. At this point it was yet another example of her not telling me (what I thought was) an important piece of information, of not treating me like a partner, and what made it incomprehensible to me was that there was no reason for her not to tell me this. It’s not her fault E has feelings for her, and I had already told her that she could hook up with him if she wanted–why hide this? Overall, I felt like I was having trouble trusting her–and these few data points are in addition to much broader patterns of secrecy in the relationship that I won’t get into here. I never felt like I knew what was going on with her.

Part 3 incoming...

[Feeling Foggy]

Part 3

We calmed things down and patched them up and proceeded onward. But the incident did shake me. During this time we were technically on a break from ENM, and she had previously made comments suggesting that her sexual desires were in flux and that she needed some time to think about what she wanted. I was worried that she’d want to open things up even more than I was comfortable with, for example by getting into kink with other people (a hard line for both of us up to that point, but one she had started to push up against in prior conversation). In early April she tells me–opposite of what I was expecting–that she wants to be monogamous with me, that perhaps she’d be open to some group stuff (3some or 4some) at some point, but that she no longer wanted to date separately and wasn’t willing to do any of that any longer. I was surprised at this and felt like what should have been a conversation between us was instead a unilateral edict that she sprung on me. Nonetheless I agreed, though I did say that having some kind of option at some point would be nice. Mostly this was just a moment of panic at the thought of “this is the only person you’re ever going to sleep with for the rest of your life” suddenly sprung on me, as I hadn’t had time to mentally prepare, but in another day or so I had processed it and was good with being monogamous. I said I was in no rush to explore a threesome and that we’d get there if and when we got there.
A couple of weeks later she asks me if I mind if she reaches out to J. I ask why–I had not been in contact with his wife, and when we ended all of that GF and I agreed that we wouldn’t ever be hooking up with them–and GF says that he’s an interesting guy and that she enjoyed talking to him. However, she was still very insecure about the wife, and we had what must have been an hour-plus conversation about ground rules, all of which was driven by GF. She said that it needed to be crystal clear to both J and his wife that any contact between us would be 100% platonic and that nothing was ever going to happen. We talked about specific conversation topics: no flirting, definitely no sexting, no discussion of kink or sex, nothing like that. Totally PG friendship, other than perhaps occasionally asking them how ENM was going for them, as we had that part in common. All of these rules were driven by GF. I said OK, to go ahead and reach out to him. I said that I had no immediate plans to reach out to his wife. I said to just keep me posted periodically about what was happening with that friendship, and I said that if GF wanted to change the rules at any point, to let me know and we would discuss. She agrees.

A couple of weeks go by and I get maybe one update on J, which I had to ask for. GF says that they aren’t texting much and that it’s just smalltalk like music recommendations. Around this time she says that she is ready to get on an online dating site as a couple. We have lots and lots of discussion over the span of a week about what that would look like–lots of details to iron out, new rules of engagement, all of that. What kind of conversation is allowed and not. Do we notify the other person when we get a match? Stuff like that. We agree, create our accounts (linked on the site). The same weekend that is happening, GF is behaving very passive-aggressively. She starts a fight on Friday over something small, then again a few times on Sunday. Finally I ask her what is going on, and she says that she just wants to be monogamous with me. I say “Great. Let’s be monogamous.” I said that she was by far the most important thing to me, that I thought she was amazing, that I didn’t need ENM, and that it was a terrible idea to do it if she wasn’t comfortable. Once again, she literally insisted that we do it, said that we’d have to deal with it at some point and that it might as well be then. I said it was a bad idea, we went back and forth a few times, and she was steadfast. So I relented. A day or two later I checked in with her, and she said she was starting to get excited about it.

Fast-forward another 5 days and she’s acting shady all week. Scheduled updates didn’t happen. Stories were vague. I was at her house on a Friday, and (for only the second time in our relationship) after my spidey sense went off I asked to look at her phone. She initially balked, then agreed but asked to be present beside me while I read to “provide context.” I told her that it felt weird to have her looking over my shoulder, and that I’d read and then come talk to her in a few minutes. A few minutes turns into an hour. She’s pacing around the house nervously. I look at her conversations on app, and she literally broke every rule we had agreed to right out of the gate. There were many more ppl than she told me about. Verboten conversation topics discussed. Sexting when there wasn’t supposed to be. It got to the point where I had to grab a notepad and pen to keep track of it all, because so much stuff happened that wasn’t supposed to. Including some stuff that wasn’t technically against the rules, but which felt bad. GF and I had had many conversations in the past about whether she is attracted to women. She says she is not, though she’s had threesomes with women and enjoys receiving. But no interest in being with a woman 1:1 and not bisexual. One of her conversations is with a guy telling him how hot his partner is and how she wants to explore with women by herself. Stuff like that. Why is she telling this to a complete stranger, but had never talked with me about it?

After finding all of this, I thought that I should check her conversation with J. That made me feel even worse. They had been texting for about 2 hours each day for the past week or two. The day she and I got into our recent fight–literally while the fight was happening–she texted him for advice on how to handle it. He was confiding in her about his marital problems. They were talking about BDSM (not something that was supposed to be happening). And she was flirting with him, both explicitly in terms of sexual comments and implicitly in terms of flirty energy–most definitely against the ground rules. One day that very week, when he texted her in the morning, she said–and I quote– “Is it inappropriate of me to admit that my face lit up when I saw it was you who had texted me?” Reading that felt like a knife to the gut.

I got angry with her when I found all of this, and as you can guess that didn’t go well. She told me that I had no business talking to her like that and that I should leave if I was going to. I calmed down after about 30 seconds and went for a 5 minute walk around the block to clear my head, came back. I said that the conversation with J felt like emotional cheating to me. She said I was crazy and that I could leave. I told her that she hadn’t had that kind of energy with me recently, and she just flatly said “You’re right. I haven’t.” I calmed her down enough to get her seated on the couch, and I went through everything I found on her phone. After doing so she said, kind of aggressively, “I PLEASE READed up! Alright? What do you want me to say?” I told her that I wanted to be able to trust her, but that I had just asked her for an update an hour before, and what she told me in no way matched up to what I found on her phone. I said that I wanted to fix things, but wasn’t sure of what to do next. I asked her how I could continue to trust her, and she flatly replied “I guess you can’t.” At that point I left, and she chased me to my car asking me not to leave. I told her that I needed her to say *something*, to offer something, but that I wasn’t going to just stare at her in silence for the remainder of the evening. She had nothing to say, so I said that I was going home, and that if she decided she wanted to talk she should reach out to me.

A couple of hours later I had decided that I could forgive her–there will be speedbumps with ENM–but I was most troubled by the apparent lack of apology and remorse. When I caught her, it was like a mask fell off–something I’ve since read about BPD, but even in the moment that’s the metaphor I used. It was terrifying–like there was this person I didn’t recognize underneath, totally cold and calculating. But just in those few hours, she turned the tables. She said that she needed space and gave me the silent treatment until Sunday evening. And then, when she resurfaced, instead of apologizing and trying to make amends with me, she told me that she wasn’t sure that she wanted to be with me anymore. I asked her whether she’d have said that if I hadn’t discovered the stuff on her phone, and she said yes. Said that our “communication issues” had continued to be a problem for her. And then, she said–another quote– “there are days when I hate you.” That was hard to stomach. I broke up with her, then recanted, and for the week after we took some space. I asked her to think about her motivations for why she acted the way she did; I just needed to understand.

The next weekend we went on a long hike and agreed to get back together. She didn’t really have a good explanation for her behavior. She said that she lied about the sexting because she was afraid that I’d be angry. It was mild sexting, and I would have been fine with it if she just let me know that she got caught up in the moment; it was the deliberate lying about it that was the problem. She said that she understood and should have told me. Regarding the rest of it, she had no explanation, other than that she wasn’t thinking about me at all when she was engaging with these other people online and wasn’t being “partnership-minded.” She speculated that she broke some of the rules because she thought they were stupid, but when I asked her why she didn’t just ask to modify the rules instead of flouting them, she had no answer. And as concerns J, I didn’t really get much of any apology. She tried to minimize all of it and even said “I can understand why it might seem like we were texting a lot, but it was only for the week while she was on vacation.” When I pointed out the flirting, her attempt at defense was that the flirting came from her and not him–almost like she was trying to defend him. When I pointed out the “face lit up” comment, instead of empathy and reassuring me of her feelings for me, she said that she was just happy that he texted her, that was all.

In retrospect I should have ended things then, but I didn’t. I was head-over-heels in love with her, and while there had been issues earlier in the relationship, this was the first atomic bomb. I didn’t recognize the person she was being and wanted to put things back together. After we made the decision to reconcile, we agreed to put off any more ENM for a while. She came up with some complaints about me that she wanted me to work on, so in the spirit of partnership I focused on those (communication-related things). She didn’t bring up any of what happened again, though we did discuss ground rules for ENM if we ever got back to it. I told her that increased phone transparency for a limited period of time would make me more comfortable, and she agreed, though reluctantly.

At this point she had never met J in person and had only been texting with him for about 3 weeks, or at least that’s what I knew of the situation. Despite this she never called off that relationship, instead telling him that she was “stepping away” for a bit. This is all second-hand, as I didn’t look at her phone, so I don’t know what was actually true. (Also, she also had two phones that I knew about.) But regarding E she insisted on providing me with real-time updates, to the point of ridiculousness–she texted me literally every time he texted her, even if was to send something stupid like a meme. I told her that this wasn’t necessary, but she insisted, saying that she didn’t trust herself to know what she needed to communicate and what not. (In retrospect this seems passive-aggressive: confessions of love and sexual propositions, yes, pictures of rabbits, no.) So this continues for a few weeks. There was some continued agitation on her part regarding the relationship, some manufactured fights over stupid stuff. But also, she confided some additional personal things in me during this time period. She said that she had initially worried about having to provide more transparency to me, but that it actually was feeling good to her, and that it taught her that she could tell me things and that it would be OK. She said that because of things that happened to her growing up (which I won’t get into here, but you can probably fill in the blanks, this being a BPD forum), she had learned to hide her thoughts and feelings and needed practice sharing. So there was what seemed like good emotional progress mixed in with some of the usual drama/conflict-creation…
Because she could get easily overwhelmed by emotionally frank conversation, I decided to break things off into chunks once we got back together. I had been focusing on understanding what motivated her prior behavior and also working on the things she had asked me to work on, which she said she was seeing progress with and appreciated. Only a day after the conversation above, she shows up at my house unannounced on an evening I had my kid with me, says that she just wanted to see me. (This was the first time in 1.5 years that she had done this.) We talked for a while, just general chit-chat, and after my son went to bed I broached the topic of boundaries with outside friendships–something that I had been wanting to discuss, but had been postponing.

We talked for a hour, maybe more. It didn’t go well. She seemed to want pretty much total freedom. For example, she said that if we met a couple online and decided not to hook up with them, she wanted to be able to be friends with the man and to hang out with him 1:1. Since anything we did with other people was supposed to be transactional, this seemed risky to me. And also tone-deaf, given that she had just broken a lot of rules concerning that sort of thing. This wasn’t really the time to be asking for even more trust. I told her that I wasn’t really comfortable with this, but that it was hypothetical and that we could cross that bridge if and when.

The week prior she said that she wanted to start going to the gym with E, just the two of them. (He lived closer to her than I did, so when I suggested to her that she and I work out together, she said that wasn’t convenient.) As an aside, she mentioned to me that E had started flirting with her over text. She told him when we broke up that week, and unsurprisingly he started up with the full-court press, but she had never told him that we were back together again. I told her that I’d appreciate it if she would let him know that we were back together, that he needed to understand that their relationship was platonic, and also that I wasn’t really comfortable with the two of them working out together. She didn’t like that, and a day or two later had come back to me and said that she wanted to be able to work out with him. I told her that if it were really that important to her, OK, but I wasn’t crazy about the idea. Now she’s telling me she wants to hang out with random men she meets online 1:1 “as friends.”

As part of this conversation I tell her that I wasn't feeling comfortable with her continuing to talk with J. I felt like she had crossed lines with him. She told me that she wouldn’t text him anymore and “was done with him forever.” At the end of that convo I asked her whether we were on the same page about everything, because she seemed upset. She said that she was just tired. She proactively offered up that she “had both feet in our relationship” and “didn’t want a separate life from me.” I kissed her goodnight, she went home, and then proceeded to ghost me for 36 hours. When she resurfaced, she broke up with me over text.

Next part incoming...

[Feeling Foggy]

Final part

She didn’t have a lot of explanation to offer. She said that she and I “had different expectations for our relationship” and that I “wasn’t comfortable with her being independent and having her own life.” I told her that this seemed unfair to me: I had always encouraged her to take time to herself, to be with her family, and to hang with her female friends. I even had been pretty hands-off with other men. I just wanted to put up some guardrails, finally. She agreed with me and said that she was just feeling hopeless about our relationship, didn’t know why, and was searching for an answer to justify the breakup.

As an aside, the irony in all of this is that she was insanely jealous of any contact I had with other women. I had two female friends, neither of whom I had seen since starting to date her, and with whom I only texted sporadically every month or 6 weeks. Nonetheless GF didn’t like them and asked me to text her every time I had any contact with either of these women to let her know what we talked about. She got jealous of a work colleague I had a business lunch with one day. And regarding women I met online, she absolutely did not want me being friends with any of them. She said that while she might be OK with my having female friends, she wasn't comfortable with my having female friends that I initially met under the auspices of hooking up with. I had asked about this way back in the fall of 2020 regarding one specific person, and GF lost her s**t about it. So I wasn’t friends with that person. And remember J’s wife, the one I met online? After GF had been texting with J for a few weeks, I reached out to J’s wife to say hello. Just a friendly, platonic hello. We texted sporadically for about one hour on one day, a few jokes about corporate America, and that was it. GF looked at the conversation and again lost her s**t. So I stopped talking to J’s wife. But she kept talking to J…

After that breakup (#2 of 3 in the final series), we spoke sporadically over text over the next few days, and none of what she said made sense. Finally I drove over to her house to try and fix the relationship–again. As soon as I walked in, she collapsed into my arms. I told her that I thought ENM was toxic to our relationship and that the worst decision we ever made was trying it. I said I just wanted her and that we needed to be done with it forever. I said I thought we had something really special that we shouldn’t throw away. She breathed an audible sigh of relief and said “thank god.” She said that even when we had been taking breaks from ENM, she felt a sense of dread because she knew we’d have to discuss it again in the future. She said that the kind of emotional intimacy she wanted in a partnership wasn’t possible with non-monogamy. She held my face in her hands and said “You’re mine, forever.” So we were back together again, again. And for a few weeks everything was amazing again. I felt like I finally had my girl back, and I was more hopeful about our future than ever. I felt like I had identified the rotten part of our relationship and cut it out.

We were traveling separately with our families for 4th of July. Originally we were supposed to be together, but after two breakups and reunions in rapid succession, I suggested that we take things slow to remove pressure, especially since kids were involved. But we were supposed to vacation together in late July, and I was looking forward to that. The day before she leaves, she comes over to my house. For the first time in 18 months, she doesn’t want to be intimate. She says that she is having trouble getting emotionally settled back into our partnership, even though the prior 2 weeks had been amazing by mutual admission. She said that she felt like she wasn’t good enough for not being able to perform sexually that day. She said (out of nowhere) that she was concerned about the timeline for us cohabitating. I reassured her that everything was going to be fine, that she was putting unnecessary pressure on herself, and that we could talk about things after we returned from vacation. I said not to worry about any of this, and that I only needed to know that when we returned a week later, that she'd still be there for me. She said she was still in our relationship and wasn't going anywhere.

That weekend we talked on the phone and over Snap. She was OK and affectionate sometimes, but distant at other times. When she returned, we planned to go to the art museum on Saturday and cook dinner together–the first time I would have seen her after the trip. The day before, we texted, and she told me how much she loved me and was looking forward to spending the rest of her life with me. Later that afternoon, she picked a fight over something stupid and E-related. He had been continuing to flirt with her, and she wasn’t shutting it down. A week prior she said that she wanted to handle things tactfully and not be mean to him; said that she just wasn't reciprocating the flirting and that she hoped he'd get the message. I told her that I’d give her latitude to handle in the way she thought best, though internally it bothered me a bit. That afternoon she pretty much forced me to tell her if anything was on my mind, then when I asked for a little reassurance about her feelings for me and the E situation, she blew up. I even prefaced it by saying that she was doing everything the right way and that I was grateful for her increased transparency; I just wanted a little emotional support. (This was probably the first time ever that I explicitly asked for reassurance from her.) It should have been a 2-minute conversation. 45 minutes later it was somehow my fault. I don’t know how. When I saw her the next day she broke up with me for the final time. That was July 10th. I never saw her again.

That day, she said that it was a mistake for her to take me back a few weeks prior. She said she was feeling hopeless about our relationship and emotionally fatigued. When I asked about her comments just 24 hours prior about how she wanted to be with me forever, she said that she meant it in the moment, but that was before we had a disagreement about E later that day. She said that things weren’t getting better and were going in circles.

Over the next week we continued to text and voice chat, though I didn’t see her. The tone was friendly, though. She didn’t offer much in the way of coherent explanation for the breakup. In addition to the above, she said that she was tired of feeling badly about herself, though she didn’t explain that comment. She said something about our relationship being doomed by the fact that it got started during COVID, and she didn’t explain that either. She said that perhaps in time we could have learned to communicate more effectively, but that she was too tired to keep working on things now. She said she didn’t understand why she was so easily destabilized in our relationship and couldn’t guarantee me that she wouldn’t leave again if we got back together. She said it had nothing to do with me and was on her end. She said that she didn’t believe me when I said at the end that I wanted monogamy with her, that bringing up ENM at the start of our relationship was her biggest regret ever, and that she’d feel compelled to try and give it to me even if I never asked for it again.

She said that she loved me immensely, that there is no other man on earth like me, and that she’d never find anyone as good as me, so why bother even trying to date again. She said that I should rest assured that she wasn’t just going to throw up her hands at the demise of our relationship and say “C’est la vie,” but would be working hard to understand what happened with us, why it happened, and what she wanted. She said that she probably wouldn’t want to get back together ever again, and in the same conversation said that she just needed time and space and would love for a fresh start between us someday.

That week was my birthday. She left a present on my front porch along with a self-pitying note. After another week or so, I felt like I was getting mixed messages from her and didn’t know if I should move on or wait for her. I e-mailed her, said I just wanted to be with her, and asked her what she’d think if we took a few months off of seeing other people to work on ourselves and maybe talked again in the fall. I said that I was confused and that if there were more to the story, if there were someone else in the picture, I’d appreciate her letting me know.

She responded angrily a few days later, said that my e-mail “hit her really wrong” and that I should talk to my therapist about my motivations for sending it. She said that she did not want to get back together and never to contact her again. She said that she hadn’t been with anyone else, that there was no one else, and that she had barely even spoken with E, if that was the source of my concern.

A month goes by and my dog passed away unexpectedly. I reached out to her in my grief, not really thinking straight, and to my surprise she replies with her condolences. Tells me that I am a good man and a good father. Tells me that “you don’t deserve any of this.” Tells me that she read my email 30 times and that her heart broke every time she read it. Said that she wasn’t otherwise ready to talk yet, but that she’d always be there for me. Always.

I tell her that I’d love to reconnect, but if she wasn’t ready to talk, then I wanted to give her the space to heal and to respect that. I told her I loved her. Two more months go by and total radio silence. In late October I sent one final e-mail, telling her that I had been reading a lot about attachment theory, and that I felt like it caused me to look at our relationship with fresh eyes, that it really changed things for me. I asked whether she’d be open to talking or to my sharing some resources I’d read. No response.

In December I found out (through means I won’t get into here) that only a week after breaking up with me, and while we were still texting, she created a FetLife account and posted a bunch of naked pics, all of which were pics she had supposedly taken just for me, and one of which was taken in my bedroom. She said that she was looking for a relationship. Being FetLife, she listed many very kinky things she was looking for, and who does she friend on day 1–just a week after our breakup? J.

A month later--literally the same week that my dog passed away and we're e-mailing about that--she updates her status to being in a relationship with J (who’s still married and in an open marriage). The kicker? She’s now decided that she’s polyamorous. After all of that. This morning I stumbled across her profile on OKC. She’s non-monogamous now, talking about looking for meaningful and deep connections. There are pics from her summer Hawaii trip that I was supposed to be with her on. Pics of her snowshoeing. She looks great. I had deleted all of my pics of her when we broke up; it was too painful to look at. Six months later and I’m still a wreck; seeing her face leveled me. And like so many other stories I've read here, she skated out of our relationship without a second thought. I’m heartbroken, folks.

In retrospect, looking at all of the context clues, I don’t think she ever stopped talking to J. That’s probably why she broke up with me the penultimate time–I said I didn’t want them speaking anymore. Who knows if they were sleeping together. That week we took apart; that would be a prime candidate. Who knows what else she hid from me. Reading all of the threads here, some of the similarities; replaying old conversations and remarks I didn't flag at the time: I have no idea how deep the deception went. But I do know that all the stuff at the end was bulls**t. You can't be mourning the loss of one relationship when you monkey-branch into another.

So, for those brave souls who read all of this: am I the problem? I thought I had been exceedingly patient with her and asked her for very little. I asked for very little oversight into her outside activities and only a few boundaries–boundaries that were still more lax than what she expected of me. But by the end of things I felt like the problem. I just finished reading “Psychopath Free,” and a lot of what he says in that book resonates with me, especially the “detective rule…” But this wasn't flagrant emotional abuse. It was just like drops of water eroding a rock over time...and eroding my sense of self-esteem. Other than leaving her on the day when I found about all of her online activity, and other than reading her mind about non-monogamy (although she changed her mind about that too!), I don't know what I should have done differently. Should I just have had no rules with her "friendships" with other men?

I still doubt myself. Thoughts?

[once removed]

hi FF, and welcome to the family.

Some folks would say that when a relationship ends, the most important thing is to look forward and to work on yourself–not to get too focused on you ex and trying to figure them out. Easier said than done. And part of the process of focusing on yourself is figuring out what you need to own and how you’re going to show up in future relationships. And a big part of that is the question of “healthy boundaries.”

youve got your eye on the prize. you want to learn the lessons from this relationship, but first, you want to know what the hell youve been through. and its a heartbreaking read.

theres plenty of "bpdish" stuff in your story, to be sure. while my story is different than yours, i recognize a lot of mine in it. replace, for example, ENM and etc with pornography, and you have a lot of overlap. a lot of double standards, agreements not met, suspicious or hidden behavior (or worse) etc.

when you love someone with BPD, you love someone who is confused about who they are, hates and fears who they are, and tends to try to win your love by becoming the best version of the person they think you would love. this, of course, is unsustainable, and a lot of the struggles with that, are things we arent necessarily even privy to. so there is a lot that you describe that is well within the realm of borderline personality style behavior. that will help a lot to learn and understand more about. as a PS, i think if you want to do that, books like Psychopath Free will confuse you more than help.

at the same time, the relationship can become disorienting when we arent necessarily clear on some of those things either.

i think there is a lot that she told you about her feelings about the relationship and its end that you can quickly dismiss, and a lot that you should (as youre able) take at face value. it will take some time, detachment, and healing, sorting out what is what, but when she talks about communication, the thing that jumps out from 30000 feet up, is that the two of you were never really on the same page. this is true for the vast majority of us. its, in part, why so much of the behavior toward the end feels so shocking. its hard to come to terms with too, because i imagine that so very often, it sure felt like it.

you might set aside that notion for a time if need be, and come back to it. theres a lot to sort through here. we are here to help with that, and, eventually, you will.

what you recently discovered is pretty shocking and hurtful. how are you holding up?

[Feeling Foggy]

Thank you for the reply. Regarding the suspicion of BPD, there is a lot of other stuff I didn't list out above only because my post was so long: turbulent and rapidly shifting emotions (mostly internalized, but occasionally acting out); passive-aggression and conflict creation; unstable sense of self; difficulty accessing and labeling emotions; needing a long time to emotionally process; an unending need for validation--both emotional and physical--that I could never, ever meet no matter how much I tried; extreme hypersensitivity and defensiveness in the face of perceived criticism, to the point where I couldn't even provide feedback about anything; lack of empathy; lack of remorse and accountability; childhood trauma; feelings determining facts and circular arguments. And more.

But, of course, these negatives are only part of the picture. She is a beautiful person in many ways, which is why the loss of the relationship haunts me. I've never experienced another person like this, and her loss has left a hole inside of me.

At this particular moment, I'm not doing great. Between the breakup and my dog's passing only 5 weeks later, the past 6 months have been brutal. Not hearing anything from her and only being able to speculate as to what was going on, I had been starting to move on in late fall, hoping that she was reflecting on our relationship like I was and perhaps that I'd hear from her in the coming months. But discovering what I found in December--the online pics, the relationship with this other guy immediately after ours, the probable cheating at the end of ours--really hit hard. And then finding her other dating profile yesterday was difficult also. It was all so...abrupt. I'm still trying to radically accept that I'll never see her again, that it was over *just like that*, and if I ever do, I probably won't even recognize the person she is. I'm sure that many on this forum can relate, but I feel disposable, like I'm not good enough, and like I was dead weight she cut off so that she could live her more exciting life--and I've been left behind. Not a productive mindset, but that's how it feels.

Regarding communication, that was always a priority for her. In fact, at the beginning of our relationship when she pitched the idea of ENM, one of her stated reasons was that she thought it would force a couple to have really good communication with each other. She always wanted to be understood and heard, and always felt like she wasn't. Of course, she'd identify that as a problem with her partner and/or the relationship, while it seems to me like it came from within her. You can't communicate with your partner if you don't understand what's happening inside of you and/or are too scared to show it. Or if you're subconsciously engineering conflict to push them away.

I don't know what to think about her newfound polyamory. Is this just her mirroring her new love interest? Is it her way of not investing too much emotionally in any one person, of hedging her bets, so that she doesn't get hurt again? A way of achieving an endless supply of sexual intensity and validation from multiple people, to avoid the inevitable step-down into stability that comes with most LTRs? What I don't understand is that if she truly wanted ENM all along with me, she could have had that in any number of permutations. *She* was the one who became emotionally uncomfortable with it, not me. But she wouldn't accept monogamy with me, either, even though she said she wanted it. When I finally insisted on it, she up and left me 3 weeks later, then became polyamorous. It makes no sense. Perhaps what she really wanted was total freedom on her end, no rules or restrictions, but having me hemmed in on mine--since my being with or even talking to other women was too much for her to bear. That's not fair, but who said people are always fair?

...I'll never know. I continue to torture myself with these and 1000 other questions, at least some of which relate to whether I was overly demanding of her. Towards the end of things, she also started to triangulate me with her therapist (who knows what version of events the therapist received...) and would make some offhanded comments about my being controlling (apparently because I didn't agree to letting her do literally anything without even talking to me about it). So again, I look ahead to future relationships, and I don't trust my instincts anymore. A grown man of 43, highly educated, have a good amount of life experience, and I don't trust my basic instincts on what's OK and what's not.

The whole thing sucks. Even the demise of my 14-year relationship with my now-ex wife didn't hit me this hard. And knowing that I don't even exist to her anymore, that it was a play of sorts, is the worst part. Here I am, typing away on a Tuesday morning, trying to emotionally recover from the devastation. And she's not even thinking of me...

[once removed]

But, of course, these negatives are only part of the picture

of course. we loved complicated people.

It was all so...abrupt.

its a pretty brutal timeline. i think that for anyone, seeing an ex lover move into a new relationship is going to be hard. when, in the process, you learn things that seem contrary to what you knew about the person, when it suggests they havent struggled with the finality like we have, when there are things that are contrary to what we told, its real double, or triple, or quadruple whammy.

That's not fair, but who said people are always fair?

the honest answer is, i suspect thats the crux of it.

people change. i knew a gal who hurt me any more than the situation had any right to, who, in a span of a few months, publicly went from bisexual, to lesbian, to straight. i dont mean to jumpstart a discussion about sexual fluidity so much as explain that peoples priorities can change, and for some, they can change rapidly.

you want to know if this is a reflection of her, or bpd, or others, i understand. its a valid question. on one hand, the answer is yes; people with bpd, in general, can be pretty fluid about whatever it is theyre interested in, whether its long term or short term. youre not off base. on the other hand, youre going to meet a lot of people who are not necessarily bpd, who may be similar. youre going to meet a lot of people, who may not know what they want, or may have some idea of what they want, or may have too rigid and unrealistic an idea of what they want, and they may adjust their expectations, or they may not.

the solution, the way to navigate, is to understand the dating world can kick your butt, and the way to a lifelong partner is being sure of what you want and finding someone who is, at least, compatible with that. at the end of the day, the two of you had significant compatibility issues. a large part of that may feel like its on her. a large part of it is on her. going forward, youre going to want to explore some of these things, and determine what makes you, and what separates you from other potential partners. a lot of us werent so sure then, and may not be so sure now. pairing with a person who is even less sure than we are is recipe for relationship conflict.

[Feeling Foggy]

Not a lot of action on this (although admittedly it was super-long), but wanted to provide what I imagine is a final update. @Once Removed, thanks for your comments and support.

Immediately after I found her FetLife profile in December I fired off a handful of angry texts to her--the first time I had texted her since the week of the breakup 5 months earlier. Didn't mention the site or her BF by name, but made it clear enough that I knew. Told her that I had done so much work to understand her behavior and forgive her, but that clearly I misjudged who and what she is. Told her never to contact me again. And a few other choice words.

Finding it all was...kind of nauseating. The naked pics on the Internet for everyone to see--pics that supposedly had been taken only for me, one of which was even taken in my bedroom. The 80 or so tags of all the fetishes she's into. The fact that this was only a week after our breakup. And her getting together with this guy, the one she emotionally cheated with, was enamored with, and with whom she was supposedly done forever. She couldn't have picked a more hurtful person to monkey-branch with. Profound rejection, but also a feeling of being emasculated.

Unsurprisingly she didn't respond to the texts I sent, and I regretted sending them almost immediately. Partly because it just showed her that I was upset and amounted to giving away my power--what little of it I had left. But also I felt badly for telling her never to contact me again. It's hard for me to stay angry with her, try as I do.

Around that time I had been rethinking my actions in the relationship, and for some reason I didn't see earlier that she had been trying to signal to me repeatedly that she wasn't comfortable with non-monogamy in our relationship. Regardless of what her new polyamorous status is all about, in our relationship she never got comfortable with ENM. Would get extremely insecure and jealous. I'd offer or even recommend that we stop, and she'd insist over my objections that we continue. Why, I don't know. Was she afraid that I'd leave her? Was she trying to inhabit a certain persona? Trying to give me what she thought I wanted?

Regardless, I never wanted it that much, and at the time all I did was take her at her word regarding what she said she wanted to do. I wish that she never insisted that we continue and accepted my suggestions to stop. But I also wish I hadn't expressed an interest in it in the first place--at least not with her. Most of all I regret not insisting over her objections that we put a stop to it earlier. Yes, she's an adult who should be responsible for her actions and stated preferences, but I felt (and still feel) a tremendous amount of guilt and remorse for not picking up on all of the context clues.

So I did something stupid, and I wrote her a letter--an actual, old-timey paper letter, as I didn't know whether she had blocked my email. I went by her house on New Year's Eve and dropped it in her mail slot...the first time I had been back to her house since the day of the breakup many months prior. Lights were off. Nobody home. I could only think about where she was and what she was doing and with whom. In the letter I clarified that I knew about her relationship with J and the timeline and all. I apologized for sending those texts in anger. I apologized at length for how the whole non-monogamy situation went down in our relationship, and for making her feel less-than and devalued. It was the last thing I'd have ever wanted, to make her feel that way. I reiterated to her how much I love her and how special a person she is. And then I spent a few pages talking about attachment theory, avoidant attachment, and how I thought it explained a lot of what happened in our relationship and what she said she was feeling. I linked a Web resource I found helpful. It was a hail-mary, but I felt like I had an obligation to say *something* to her about everything I'd learned (this was prior to putting the full BPD picture together, although what I discussed still applied).

In retrospect it was a terrible decision. At the least, I should have mailed it instead of driving over there. Even though I had only reached by email out a few times since early July and had never texted her or come by her place, it probably fed into whatever negative narrative she has going. But I never should have sent the letter at all, really. I felt like I had to dig my way out of the text messages I had sent, but every time I go back to that well it only makes it worse. I had no idea how she'd take my apology, but given that she's now polyamorous, perhaps it would just make her smirk. Given how defensive she gets and how sensitive her control trigger is, the stuff about AT at the end probably just pissed her off. And who knows whether she even read it, or whether she read it to J and they laughed about it. I had this vision in my head of the two of them returning to her house after a NYE weekend trip, finding the letter, sitting down on the couch together and reading it. ...Should have let things lie.

Speaking of J, given how much my motivated reasoning had kicked in, I jumped through all sorts of mental hoops to convince myself that *maybe* the info I found on her profile wasn't that bad. I didn't know for sure that she had been with him while together with me, apart from the earlier emotional cheating I had found. But maybe she really did wait until after the relationship to reach out to him. Maybe she monkey-branched immediately because she was in so much pain from our breakup, which would mean that she had feelings for me, yes? Maybe she chose him out of convenience, since she already knew him, and not for reasons relating to him being better than me. Maybe her silence over these past six months is because she's angry with me, or really hurt from the breakup, or at least ashamed of her behavior--instead of being indifferent. And maybe their relationship had fizzled out. The status update I saw on her profile was last week of August. There had been no new activity on the profile since then. Who knew what might have happened in the four months prior?

Unfortunately all of those desperate hopes soon came unraveled. A week after I sent those texts, she posted new NSFW content on her profile--the first pics since July 20, the day she signed up. It was Xmas-related. Perhaps she would have posted it anyway, but it seemed awfully coincidental. Was she f**king with me? --And she posted another pic about a week after I dropped off my letter, also deleting her face pic/headshot and verifying her profile. Don't know what that was about...paranoia I'd try to do something malicious? More to the point, if she was active on the site and hadn't changed her relationship status, that meant that they were still together.

Once I put together the BPD stuff, I went back over the relationship again and again with a fine-toothed comb. And I learned that pwBPD don't leave one relationship until they find another. Between that fact and a number of now-suspicious-looking events and interactions in the final two months, I'm almost certain that she continued speaking with him at the least--was grooming him--and it wouldn't at all surprise me if they were having sex. It wouldn't even surprise me if he gave her advice to leave me. She had gone to him weeks prior to ask his advice during an argument with me, so she was talking to him about our relationship. That made me feel even worse. But it also gave me a little hope that the BPD cycle had kicked in, and that by this point devaluation had started. By end of January we were about 7 months post-discard.

No such luck. In early Feb I stumbled across her OK Cupid dating profile, as mentioned above, where she also listed herself as non-monogamous. So I guess that part stuck. I swiped left ("no") to get rid of it, but I knew it'd recirculate at some point. Later I learned that you can block profiles.

About a week ago I couldn't sleep, so at about 12:30am I grabbed my phone and opened the app. Who's at the top of my "recently online" stack? She is, which at the least means that she's engaging with other men in addition to J. But that's not the part that felt really bad.

I opened her profile, so that I could block it. If you identify as non-monogamous on OKC, it gives you the option of linking to a partner's profile, if you have a "primary" partner and they're on the site. Back when I met J's wife on that site a year ago, his profile was linked with hers. But many non-monogamous folks don't have a primary partner (i.e., a serious relationship, spouse, nesting partner, etc.), so they don't have anyone linked.
When I found her profile in Feb, she was just listed as "non-monogamous." When I found it last week, it was "non-monogamous, partnered." And J's profile is now linked to hers. I looked at her photos. There are new ones. Of the two of them together. I had seen pics of him before, alone, but I had never seen a photo of them together. Seeing it made it truly real, and it was heartbreaking. There was one of them out at some sort of fancy event. She's in a dress, her hair done up. One of them outside, in what looks like summer or early fall. And she looks so happy. I know social media can be deceiving, but her smile is so bright...and her eyes. I always look at the eyes. It looks genuine. She's in love with him.

I look at his profile. More pics of the two of them; feels similarly awful. And the significance of it. It's now 8 months post-discard. And not only are they still together; they're going strong. If she were just on app looking for other guys to get out of that relationship (as I think she was doing when I met her online), she wouldn't link his profile. And there is significance in her doing so: it makes it "official" in a way. He's not a casual FWB or rebound relationship. He's her "partner." She immediately replaced me and is in a serious relationship, one which has already lasted 50% of the length of my relationship with her.

And J's wife. Why isn't her profile linked to his? (You can only link one.) I look at his bio, and he talks about being married and mentions his wife. I look at his pictures. There are pictures of him and my exGF. But also pictures of him and his wife together. Having pictures of all three of them together; having her profile linked to his while he's married...are they in some kind of "throuple" situation? Do the three of them have sex? J's wife is bisexual and was very into the possibility of sleeping with my exGF. My ex, on the other hand, found the wife to be annoying and "nosey" and also was made very insecure by her. Now look at her. Do they share a bed, all three of them?

Even writing this now, I feel nauseous. I blocked her OKC profile, just as I blocked her Fet profile. (Unfortunately all that means is that you have to go to your "settings" page and can unblock them, so it's still relatively easy to peek if my willpower flags). But the pictures of the two of them are seared into my brain.

I know they say not to try and make any sense of what pwBPD do. Yet I can't keep the questions at bay. If she wants non-monogamy now, then why didn't she ask for it with me? I offered it to her, and she knew she could have it--or at least that we could try and see how it goes. If she's doing it now, why did she get so insecure anytime I met up with or even chatted with other women? --She was a mess of jealousy and insecurity. But she can handle it now with J? If she wanted polyamory specifically--i.e., non-monogamy with significant emotional investment in other people--then wasn't that at least worth a conversation with me? In addition to the rejection I feel at the discard, seeing this lifestyle change feels even more humiliating. After all that she and I went through with this, all of the drama... it seems like she's now happy, living her exciting new life, and that the issue wasn't monogamy vs. ENM; she just didn't want it with me. (But then, what of all the profession of love...yes, I know, they don't love, but the brain questions.)

I wonder again and again what I could have done differently to have avoided this outcome. I wonder what he has that I don't. Even worse, I can think of some things about him she might view as an "upgrade." I don't think she feels that she downgraded. And I don't think she was hiding the relationship out of shame. She didn't attempt to rub it in my face because she's totally indifferent to me. Or maybe she was concerned that I'd tip him off about what happened in our relationship.

Either way, I've been completely erased. They say pwBPD will always be unhappy, but she doesn't look unhappy to me. She's got a partner she's in love with and armies of men chasing her on the dating apps and on Fet. What's worse, I think polyamory will be a band-aid for her BPD. I've read that pwBPD don't often seek treatment, but when they do, it's because they hit rock bottom. But by having multiple partners, she has multiple sources of attention and validation (in addition to what she receives from internet strangers on Fet). She has multiple sources for sex, which helps to satisfy her impulsivity and novelty-seeking. It also helps with her hypersexuality; no matter how much one partner gives her, it's never enough. We'd go for hours and hours every time I saw her, and it was never enough. If I wanted even one off night because I was tired, it was the end of the world, and she'd emotionally decompensate.

Multiple partners hedges her abandonment fears, and perhaps makes her more emotionally regulated. And she's no longer accountable to anyone, which was always an issue between her and me. J apparently doesn't have any boundaries and presumably won't ask anything of her. He's married, so he can go to his wife for emotional support, which means that he won't burden my exGF with any "neediness." It won't matter if she's secretive or tells lies. It doesn't matter if she's flirting, sexting, sleeping with, or falling in love with other people; he's cool with all of it, so there wouldn't be any trouble associated with her breaking rules. No, I think this will wind up working for her just fine. Which also means that she'll look at me and our relationship, and this will only cement in her mind that I was the problem.

I love her, and part of me wants her to be happy. But right now, a bigger part of me wants her to be unhappy. Not just because her leaving me destroyed me, and because I'm feeling angry and betrayed, but also because if her new relationship crashes and burns, then maybe it would signal to her that she really is the problem, the common denominator in her trail of destruction. But I don't think that's gonna happen. She'd been out living life this whole time, not thinking of me at all I presume, while I've been barely functioning.

I know that the answer is not to worry about what she's doing or what she thinks of me. Easier said than done. I know the answer is to work on myself. And I am. I'm trying so hard. But a lot of things in my life aren't where I'd like them to be, and it will take time. As for her: there is no other her. He now has the one and only. I've been dating, and no one else compares. No one else is as charming or intoxicating; as beautiful; as sexually intense. Maybe they make better relationship material, but I don't want to compromise to be with someone. The "likes" roll in with regularity, but none of them compare to her. She's got her pick of the litter, but I feel stuck.

There's no way I could ever take her back, even if she asked. Could never trust her again. But I can't bring myself to block her phone or email yet. But it doesn't matter. I feel confident that I'll never hear from her again. She once told me, proudly, that she has no regrets at all about anything. And that once she's done with someone, she'd done with them forever. Now I know what that feels like.

[Kayteelouwho]

Hi, and welcome