Dealing with No Contact with recent breakup

[mackey33]

Thank you so much to this forum for existing, it's been invaluable for me in coming to terms with a brief but destructive relationship. Just a few random thoughts as the sign up process prompted me to say something as an intro.

Someone I know put the idea of BPD into my head after a first bad ending of this relationship, and I read some about it and it all clicked, but then we tried again and I pushed it out of my mind. It couldn't be true, she's just a slightly damaged person with a good heart and I was just being dramatic. But then things turned badly again and I couldn't ignore it. The details are really common, they're in thread after thread so I won't run through them, other than that the person isn't diagnosed and would almost certainly consider it abuse and gaslighting if they were told they had BPD.

Once I heard the phrase "I hate you don't leave me" any doubts I had went away, it encapsulates everything perfectly. And I read and read and read and every little thing clicked.
The relationship was only three months, and as this person is in my social circle the possibility of a clean break is very difficult, although as it stands there is no contact and they are blocked on everything. I am sure there will be emails in my spam folder that I won't check, I saw one post that said they eventually found I love you/I hate you emails back and forth in their spam folder and that's exactly what I would expect.

My mood veers from anger/fear of false stories they will tell people or retribution they may take (they told me terrible things about their ex's behaviour and their attempts to get him arrested and lose his job for the way they hurt them, which at the time I was on board with but now they say the same things about me it's hard to believe anymore), and to feelings of terrible sadness and guilt that they're stuck with a condition they never asked for, and thinking about that poor little kid they were that got messed up like this. That makes me want to contact them again and try and say anything to make them feel better if even for a moment, knowing it will turn again, but I know I can't do that, and friends and family constantly warn me not to. But it's really hard.

I struggle to know how to explain it to people who know us both. I know people with BPD after a breakup can launch smear campaigns and I'm sure this is happening, but telling people I'm sure the person has a serious disorder feels like a smear campaign itself, even airing the dirty laundry in even a small amount feels bad. But I know they have a narrative that I'm a narcissist abuser (just like their ex apparently was and just like so many people they seem to have come across) and I don't know how to counter that without oversharing back. At the moment I'm pretty much just laying low and talking to those I can trust, while thinking about nothing else but this 24 hours a day.

Thanks again to this forum for existing.

[Mutt]

Hey mackey33,

I'm sorry for the circumstances that led you to our forum here. I'm glad that you decided to join us. I can relate with what you're saying with reading posts and seeing the same pattern.

You said that everything clicked by reading similar stories and going through a repeated pattern. As you know BPD is really hard to detect, even when you're close to it.

If you think about a time before you met someone with BPD traits and someone explained it to you, you'll probably understand some concepts but you won't really get it unless you've experienced it first hand.

I agree with your observation. I've never told my fiancé about BPD ( ex-wife undiagnosed ) but I'll say things in an indirect way. For example, I've said that my ex was the same person at the end of the r/s as she was at the start with no personal growth hinting that she's emotionally stunted.

I understand having the need to tell your experience to others. When there's BPD things going on in our personal lives it helps to direct it to the forum - to people that get it because they've walked a mile in your shoes. I save that stuff for here and if there's a need to share it in the real world, I try to say it in indirect ways.

[mackey33]

Thank you so much for your reply, Mutt. I've had a weird couple of weeks, I'll be massively angry (because I know for sure now that things have been said to mutuals and it's hard to combat it and I'm really just laying low still) and then massive feelings of guilt and sadness for them. Usually after having read pwBPD writing about their experiences, and how much they hate how they act and just can't stop themselves. It's enough to make me want to unblock and reach out and apologise for things I haven't done just to make them feel better for one second, even though it'll turn again and be worse, and the apology wouldn't be taken well anyway, and be taken as a confirmation of how evil I am. Everyone I know tells me to continue to block and just move on, and let the mutuals go if they accept what the person says. But days go by, and it's still all I think about.

[jaded7]

Thank you so much to this forum for existing, it's been invaluable for me in coming to terms with a brief but destructive relationship. Just a few random thoughts as the sign up process prompted me to say something as an intro.

Someone I know put the idea of BPD into my head after a first bad ending of this relationship, and I read some about it and it all clicked, but then we tried again and I pushed it out of my mind. It couldn't be true, she's just a slightly damaged person with a good heart and I was just being dramatic. But then things turned badly again and I couldn't ignore it. The details are really common, they're in thread after thread so I won't run through them, other than that the person isn't diagnosed and would almost certainly consider it abuse and gaslighting if they were told they had BPD.

Once I heard the phrase "I hate you don't leave me" any doubts I had went away, it encapsulates everything perfectly. And I read and read and read and every little thing clicked.
The relationship was only three months, and as this person is in my social circle the possibility of a clean break is very difficult, although as it stands there is no contact and they are blocked on everything. I am sure there will be emails in my spam folder that I won't check, I saw one post that said they eventually found I love you/I hate you emails back and forth in their spam folder and that's exactly what I would expect.

My mood veers from anger/fear of false stories they will tell people or retribution they may take (they told me terrible things about their ex's behaviour and their attempts to get him arrested and lose his job for the way they hurt them, which at the time I was on board with but now they say the same things about me it's hard to believe anymore), and to feelings of terrible sadness and guilt that they're stuck with a condition they never asked for, and thinking about that poor little kid they were that got messed up like this. That makes me want to contact them again and try and say anything to make them feel better if even for a moment, knowing it will turn again, but I know I can't do that, and friends and family constantly warn me not to. But it's really hard.

I struggle to know how to explain it to people who know us both. I know people with BPD after a breakup can launch smear campaigns and I'm sure this is happening, but telling people I'm sure the person has a serious disorder feels like a smear campaign itself, even airing the dirty laundry in even a small amount feels bad. But I know they have a narrative that I'm a narcissist abuser (just like their ex apparently was and just like so many people they seem to have come across) and I don't know how to counter that without oversharing back. At the moment I'm pretty much just laying low and talking to those I can trust, while thinking about nothing else but this 24 hours a day.

Thanks again to this forum for existing.

Glad you posted here. You sound a like a very thoughtful and nice person.

The story they will tell about you is a hard one to just accept. We've all struggled with that. And the rumination too, it's so exhausting and stressful.

So you feel validated, I'll share that my ex also told me about her horrible, abusive narcissistic ex husband. She told me she took out a protective order against him. She told me that he was a terrible person.

I believed all this. Even though she constantly talked about him for our 2 year relationship, frequently forwarded me his texts and emails to read and tell her what a jerk he was. During our last few months, this is almost all we talked about.

It was very important to her that I think of him as a narcissist and abuser. Thing is, in all the text and emails I read from him to her, I never sensed an abusive person...at all. No mean words, no threats, no ultimatums. None. He was frustrated at times, trying to get her to keep her word or figure out why she was being secretive or slippery about things, he was mad once when she lied to him about what their son was doing in the summer so she could 'exchange some time' and therefore do her 3 week European trip without him knowing, and she caused her son to lie to him as well.

But I never saw abuse. I don't think he was abusive anymore.

I do know that when we had our last phone conversation, when she was really mad and yelling at me, calling me names and putting me down, she said that I had yelled at her in the car on a trip we took. Nothing could further from the truth, I never once yelled at her or even raised my voice. She, on the other hand, would yell at me for miles and miles. Once violently pulled off a 2-lane highway in the wilderness to kick me out of the car and make me walk home...in the rain.

When she accused me of yelling at her, I realized she was willing to lie to me- the person most able to determine the truth of the matter- about something near-abusive (yelling), and something she did to me often.

That scared me, and I realized then she was capable of saying anything about me. So I've had to live with this, learn to accept that she might be saying things about me, and come to trust myself and that people who know me won't believe it.

Its hard, I know.

[mackey33]

Thank you for your reply and kind words, it's much appreciated. Hearing your story about the ex is honestly so shocking. I'm still in this inbetween place where I spent so long thinking it was the exes behaviour that caused all the problems, and the growing realisation (now pretty much confirmed in my mind) that everything said about him was a lie, whether or not she believes it. It's validating but also terrifying, I know the smear campaign against me has begun, and as someone still new to the city I live in and without long-term friendships here it's a bit devastating, but I also know she went after her exes work, and had the police investigate him (thrown out obviously for lack of evidence). As everything is on block, and any emails are going to spam, I have no evidence anything like that might have happened or be set to happen, but it is scary to think someone might try to completely ruin your life. The more I learn and read the more I come to the horrible realisation that this doesn't just blow over quietly.

She claimed to have more evidence against her ex on her old mobile phone, which got conveniently lost a few weeks into us seeing each other. I really struggle with that story now, this is someone who would overreact to every little thing, every hurdle was a massive drama, and yet they were so blase about the phone being lost on the day it happened. I mean I myself would be in a rubbish mood if I lost my phone but they were really calm about it. It's hard to not to think there wasn't any evidence on there and losing the phone was a convenient way to explain it. As you said, the only evidence I saw (or heard, a voice recording) didn't amount to anything at all, other than being told 'it gets worse after but I wasn't recording'. I just accepted, and still do accept really, that abusive people are clever and tend not to leave paper trails and such. That she might have been lying really turns my head upside down on what I would normally believe.

The only time I yelled, it was on a phone conversation where they twisted several things I said in a row and I lost my temper, at which point I was calmly told to not get angry, they were just trying to talk. It was pretty classic provoke a reaction and then use the reaction against you, which they later admitted to, but then again later it came back to how I got aggressive. And of course, that phone conversation involved her yelling the entire time.

Thanks again for your reply, validating and terrifying at the same time but all good to know

[Augustine]

Thank you for your reply and kind words, it's much appreciated. Hearing your story about the ex is honestly so shocking. I'm still in this inbetween place where I spent so long thinking it was the exes behaviour that caused all the problems, and the growing realisation (now pretty much confirmed in my mind) that everything said about him was a lie, whether or not she believes it. It's validating but also terrifying, I know the smear campaign against me has begun, and as someone still new to the city I live in and without long-term friendships here it's a bit devastating, but I also know she went after her exes work, and had the police investigate him (thrown out obviously for lack of evidence). As everything is on block, and any emails are going to spam, I have no evidence anything like that might have happened or be set to happen, but it is scary to think someone might try to completely ruin your life. The more I learn and read the more I come to the horrible realisation that this doesn't just blow over quietly.

Yes, they do have a remarkable talent for taking things a tad too personally/seriously, don’t they.

I would recommend paying heed to her conduct towards her former partner, and prepare myself accordingly.

I broke up with mine on June 1, and she immediately called the police, citing domestic abuse.  She officially broke up with me on the 6th, just to get her oar in.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she was now walking the streets with my portrait on a sandwich board, distributing handbills listing  all my misdeeds, and bellowing through a blow horn about the horrors she endured during the relationship.

I broke up with her on the 1st, and flew 6000km away on the 9th. She can squawk away like an old termagant to her heart’s content for all I care.

No contact is your dearest friend now.

The horror of it all does fade with time, mate.

In the beginning, there weren’t enough hours in the day to devote to turning over every BPD stone.

Almost 11 weeks later, and everything surrounding her name is withering into obscurity.

The people here were the antidote, so spill as much of your guts as need be.

We’re happy to listen.

[mackey33]

Thank you for sharing your experiences Augustine. I was told by my sister last night to basically stop researching and ovethinking (I went on a long youtube video run), as nothing has actually happened yet. Whatever might be in my spam folder might offer clues, but I am as you say trying to prepare myself for what might happen while as much as I can try to push it out of my mind. The block and no-contact felt like it had to be done, and everyone I know pushed me to do it, but the positive of not receiving the messages and being caught in the back and forth definitely right now seems to be outweighed by the negative paranoia of what could be happening unseen. Classic lose/lose situaton they put you in, right?

I remember them saying their ex would try to turn everyone against them, when in reality she was posting things all over social media. Simply telling my side of the story to people would turn people against her, if they believed me, so that's the trap I guess. By defending yourself, you confirm you're the narcissist who tries to ruin her name. And so I guess what most people say is true, keep your head down, ride it out, even though not defending yourself looks like you're guilty (of something or other) and hiding. 15 days or so now in Blockdown and I think my stress and anxiety might be growing rather than fading.