Hi Savior Complex,
I'll try to answer as best as I can. I have been out of a r/s with a pwuBPD for over 10 years now.
What types of issues came up for you in your next relationship?
The first thing that comes to my mind is insecurities and rejection.
What feelings arose that were likely because of what you experienced with your BPD exGF and what triggered those feelings?
Feelings can feel bad, they are temporary and they are personal. What I mean is feelings that were in the past with my uBPDexw are not feelings that transcend in the r/s now.
The issues that we had together for the time that we were together are issues that are part of that r/s. Sure, there are patterns that I have that cross over to other romantic r/s's but the issues that I have with my ex are not patterns that I have with my current partner. They're different people with different backgrounds, experiences and insecurities although some of the insecurities can be related by other people.
Were you tempted to go back to your BPD ex again
I had gotten to a point when I broke up with my exuBPDw that my patience had run out. The break up was incredibly hard and there were moments were I was thinking about the good parts of the r/s and was missing her. In those moments, I had feelings like I wanted to get back with her or to go back to those times where things were less tumultuous.
In my heart, and intuitively I knew that it was not good for me to go back and I needed to let go and move on because we had crossed a point of no return. The r/s was completely broken with neither one of us knowing how to repair the r/s to move on.
I had a boundary of no cheating that she crossed. We have kids from our r/s, I know that for some people they can work on things to get back to a level of trust in order to repair the r/s but that takes incredibly hard work.
I didn't want to teach my kids to take someone back after they had cheated on them and honestly it gave me a reason to finally end a bad r/s.
Did you long for more love bombing level attention or were you scared of any intense emotions and needed more calm and cool?
I experienced a honeymoon period in my next r/s, everything was new, fun and exciting, I couldn't wait to see my gf at the time. It wasn't as intense, but I understood that the idealization period from my uBPDexw is usually something that is less intense and has a beginning and an end. It made me understand that it is not healthy to want to be continuously idealized in a r/s, that it is natural that there is a brief period in new r/s's.
I was sad that it ended in my r/s after my exuBPDw but I understood that a normal idealization phase is temporary. I enjoyed it when I was in it and moved unto the next phase and wasn't yearning to go back to the previous phase.
How did you know when you were ready for another relationship after your BPD ex?
That took time. I took a long pause on purpose to self reflect because I didn't want to repeat the same mistakes as I had in a r/s with someone with BPD traits after a year and a half I tried to date and intuitively knew when I was out that I wasn't ready. I kept trying knowing that eventually that I'll be ready again and it happened.
