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How to Navigate Divorce with my undiagnosed BPD ex - I'm Feeling Huge Anxiety
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Topic: How to Navigate Divorce with my undiagnosed BPD ex - I'm Feeling Huge Anxiety (Read 394 times)
I Will Survive
Offline
What is your sexual orientation: Straight
Who in your life has "personality" issues: Ex-romantic partner
Relationship status: Separated heading for Divorce
Posts: 3
How to Navigate Divorce with my undiagnosed BPD ex - I'm Feeling Huge Anxiety
«
on:
November 19, 2022, 01:58:20 PM »
4 weeks ago I found this site, and now I understand what destroyed my marriage the destructive actions now have a name and I am so relieved to know this.
Following reading so much great content and thoughtful insights into other people’s lives I now realise I am not alone.
I was also unwittingly seduced by the usual methods of BPD. If only i had known what i was truly living with, i wish i had got help earlier to end the roller coaster, but as all of us non- BPD brusied partners know we have deep love for our partners, which is at total odds, with what we get back from them. This hurts like hell, when you read and learn it's futile to try and continue.
I felt duped & scammed my life felt like a lie the whole time. How much time i had wasted, years of my life trying to make this work - and it couldn't.
The confusion of “what have I done now?” why I could never make things right. What is wrong with him? What is wrong with me?
The marriage was such hard work to keep remotely peaceful. The anxiety and chaos my life has been with my undiagnosed bpd husband for the last 15 years.
I recogonised his issues had developed from his mother abandonment and an emotionally absent father with alcohol and anger issues.
I used to be a very relaxed person, but am now full of anxiety after a horrific breakup, which involved discovering him with another woman he knew from is 20's, during our mutually agreed "break" to get some space i desperately needed from the chaos.
He unequivocally denied an affair whatsoever. Claimed she's just a friend etc etc, but she looked so smug when i saw her, i knew then i was dead to him.
But his hostility to my discovery this was nuclear level and threatened to call the cops for trespassing on private property. He even said "look what you have done" I couldn't even muster an answer to that.
The following two weeks he flipped back to i want to talk to you, what do we do now? He was trying to meet up, but i couldn't face him yet, i was distraught.
I eventually agreed to meet but it lasted 5 minutes, as he refused to answer anything except give her name, and then saying "It's all in my head" well my decision was made there and then . I just said to him our marriage is over, we are finished. He just walked away - not one word he said.
I have not seen him since that day i ended it. I have been blocked, unblocked all the usual since i ended it. An occasional message from him, then vanishes, just as quick.
I do not contact him unless it is absolutely necessary due to joint finance matters etc.
My family encouraged me to get legal advice and i did, as in my heart i knew i had to walk away.
Initially, I was so heart broken and eaten with hurt that after 15 years he could not show me one grain of respect and meet with me once to discuss what happened. I wanted the how's and why's did he do this to me. I now know i would never get a truthful, blameless and sincere apology.
For the last two months i reflected on knowing it would have to be me to initiate the divorce, i just know for what ever reason it maybe i just knew he would do nothing.
I asked him for a divorce via text about month ago, and was immediately blocked.
However, he has now reappeared one month later with a text reply;
I am so wary i don't know how to interpret this from the mind of undiagnosed BPD ex.
This is the text;
Hi hope you are well let me know when you are free because I need to come see you and get this divorce sorted out. I'm sorry but allot has happened in a year of being on my own allot of time to think I do not want us to be nasty with each other please let me know.
I reply a suitable time and date, then say he cant do it i give him another time, then i get this text;
Hello cant do Friday it will have to be following Friday. I dont want us to be nasty with each other I have been on my own pretty much for over a year and had loads of time to think about things but like I said I'm sorry things got to this and i really hope that you find someone who will give you what you want please don't hate me and we need to get to get the divorce sorted out.
I can't do Friday because i'm moving again. (Dog name) is all good i hope your ok.
I just texted back "OK" and left it at that.
Do the "sorry's" really have any depth?
Should i meet up or keep protecting myself?
I am worried the emotional progress i have made maybe compromised if i see him
I cannot believe he is being so breezy in his text's - considering HE blocked me after i asked for the divorce.
Why does he ask me to not hate him?
He calls me Nasty, i am not a nasty person at all.
I don't trust what he writes to be truthful thoughts considering his betrayal.
I am now at a stage where i cannot see the point of meeting up, because next week he may feel completely different about me again.
Can someone help interpret his current game. I am at a loss to know what to do for the best.
Just to add all my ex will admit to is "Anger Issues" he understands his anger is what forced me to say enough and ask him to move out after a particularly horrible rage at me and throwing objects, as i needed space from his aggressive outbursts. He was regretful, and remorseful when i made him move out for space.
I know it's not my place to discuss BPD with him, but i have privately sent links to his only friend/business partner, he is luckily of sound mind and we have mutually discussed our explosive split and he both concluded we don't understand him. I told his friend some of our problems and why he had to move out, his friend had learned how bad it was for me and i was at the end of my coping ability.
He confronted my undiagnosed ex BPD about some of the things i said had happened, ex did confirm they were true to his friend. I got a moody text from the ex after his talk with his friend, but made excuses for all the things he had done to me, he never took any accountability just acted like the victim. Ex does Oscar winning victim mode.
He has no contact with any family or past friends. I think he has burned so many bridges,
BTW I ignored a lot of red flags for years before i discovered it had a name - BPD
Any help or thoughts would be hugely appreciated.
Sorry for the length of this
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ForeverDad
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Gender:
What is your sexual orientation: Straight
Who in your life has "personality" issues: Ex-romantic partner
Relationship status: separated 2005 then divorced
Posts: 18389
You can't reason with the Voice of Unreason...
Re: How to Navigate Divorce with my undiagnosed BPD ex - I'm Feeling Huge Anxiety
«
Reply #1 on:
November 21, 2022, 09:59:54 AM »
Meet in an emotionally neutral public place. You should avoid private encounters where your emotional memories of past good times might weaken your resolve to just end things.
Have a list of items from your lawyer that need to be handled. Keep things polite but more like unwinding a business merger.
Are you inclined to seek Closure? We all did. However, typically it is best to Gift yourself Closure.
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Turkish
BOARD ADMINISTRATOR
Offline
Gender:
What is your sexual orientation: Straight
Who in your life has "personality" issues: Other
Relationship status: "Divorced"/abandoned by SO in Feb 2014; Mother with BPD, PTSD, Depression and Anxiety: RIP in 2021.
Posts: 12176
Dad to my wolf pack
Re: How to Navigate Divorce with my undiagnosed BPD ex - I'm Feeling Huge Anxiety
«
Reply #2 on:
November 21, 2022, 08:00:36 PM »
Even though things are up in the air and you're going through a lot of pain and confusion, You Will Survive
What
ForeverDad
said.
My therapist told me years ago that divorce by definition is adversarial, even amicable ones, so don't give away more than you are entitled to even if you don't wish to punish him and be done.
Excerpt
I'm sorry things got to this and i really hope that you find someone who will give you what you want
This sounds nice and is likely sincere, but notice the lack of "I'm sorry that I did XYZ to you." Or
cheated
. It might be the best that you get. I received more than a few of these types of apologies
after
my ex's marriage to her young beau imploded, predictably. She was seeking solace. Your husband is as well.
There's nothing wrong with being kind, as my T said, but closure for him is what he needs to gift himself; that's not your job.
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