Need support for my recent break up

[Bxrrows]

I appreciate the time you put into trying to help me unerstand what is going on, im sure everyone on this site can relate to the fact that people that have not experienced a relationship with pwBPD do not really fully understand the feeling of this sort of fallout/conflict in their 'normal' relationships. So having a place like this to come and rant/read stories helps me get a better grip of my situation does more for me then speaking to family/friends who dont fully 'get it'.

I think you are correct with your statement about codependent traits even for myself, I was previously in a bad relationship and took 3 years of self sabotage with other people before i found my now ex with BPD. I noticed when i was in a relationship with both of these girls I would always put myself last as I felt like its my job to prioritise them and their job to prioritise me, so the fact both crumbled in simular ways is telling for how i treat relationships. When i am single, i am very self sufficient and always know people would be lucky to be with me. This might be something I have to look deeper into during my healing.

My guess is that she chose to abandon you, so she can blame you for the breakup, before you could abandon her (it always feels better if you can dump some else before they can dump you, as you are the one in control of that in order to blame you for the issue versus accepting the shame of being the reason why the relationship ended).  Likewise, she monkey branched to these other guys, so she would not be abandoned.

This part of your message stuck out to me, with her background this seems like the closest explaination to her thought process as I am going to realistically get. Things started to crumble for us when any stresses of her would be taken out on me because before she used to come to me with her problems and be childlike and upset. It might have been a change in something I did that i am unaware of that stopped her from opening up even though I did make active efforts to put time into making her feel like im her safe space and we could talk about anything.

Im guessing she started to mentally distance herself from me a little while before the breakup, ramped up her toxic behaviour and pushed my boundries until I gave her the reaction she wanted, or made a point to tell her things need to change. After that happened it gave her the out she was looking for and ultimatly we ended up splitting. She went off and started to go through her list of replacements until one took the bait and she kept me around pretending to work on things with me until things with them got more serious.

I just really wish she had the capacity to understand what has happened and the effect all of her actions had on me. We were a team and as soon as we got to the first hurdle in our relationship she made the choice to give up while I did my all to help push us forward. Really makes you think that nothing was real for her as i dont know how you can go from being utterly obsessed with me into in a new relationship within a couple oif weeks without a 2nd thought. All that being said is just BPD in a nutshell really.

I like to think she has moments where she would think about me/us and feel some type of way about it but again i do not think she has the capacity to do that. Shes got a new job, new guy around and less time to dwell on things so she might not even think about any of it. Im not 100% sure on how their mind works in terms of remorse and empathy as she showed very little though this whole process.

Bxrrows

[SaltyDawg]

I have read your most recent message.  I don't have time today to respond to it; however, I will make an effort later on in the week, Wed/Thurs to give you a full answer.

Take care.

[Bxrrows]

No problem, look forward to hearing more.

I have also been busy with christmas prep so I understand haha.

Bxrrows

[SaltyDawg]

I think you are correct with your statement about codependent traits even for myself, I was previously in a bad relationship and took 3 years of self sabotage with other people before i found my now ex with BPD. I noticed when i was in a relationship with both of these girls I would always put myself last as I felt like its my job to prioritise them and their job to prioritise me, so the fact both crumbled in simular ways is telling for how i treat relationships. When i am single, i am very self sufficient and always know people would be lucky to be with me. This might be something I have to look deeper into during my healing.

It sounds like you are very self-aware.  I know it took a bit for me to figure this out about myself, as I had a tendency to have variations of borderline women who aggressively pursued me even if I have had my wedding band on.  Simply put, "I attract CRAZY" - the common denominator was me, and I needed to figure out why - and apparently, according to my therapist, it is being codependent.  Speaking of therapists, do you have one, if not, I strongly suspect you may benefit from one, especially if it is covered by insurance - let me know if you are not and I can point you in several low-cost or even free direction to explore this about yourself.

My guess is that she chose to abandon you, so she can blame you for the breakup, before you could abandon her (it always feels better if you can dump some else before they can dump you, as you are the one in control of that in order to blame you for the issue versus accepting the shame of being the reason why the relationship ended).  Likewise, she monkey branched to these other guys, so she would not be abandoned.

This part of your message stuck out to me, with her background this seems like the closest explaination to her thought process as I am going to realistically get. Things started to crumble for us when any stresses of her would be taken out on me because before she used to come to me with her problems and be childlike and upset. It might have been a change in something I did that i am unaware of that stopped her from opening up even though I did make active efforts to put time into making her feel like im her safe space and we could talk about anything.

I am no longer my wife's safe space.  When she painted me black, she was the one who started with the divorce threats, and when I took them seriously to set aside a divorce attorney retainer fee, all of a sudden I am the bad guy who cannot be trusted for responding to her initial believable threat in an appropriate manner.  Once this 'trust' is lost, it is next to impossible to get it back.

I will comment on your 'childlike' comment, as it is believed that borderline's emotional development pretty much stop when they are a child, usually through some trauma that occurred in their FOO (family of origin).


Im guessing she started to mentally distance herself from me a little while before the breakup, ramped up her toxic behaviour and pushed my boundaries until I gave her the reaction she wanted, or made a point to tell her things need to change. After that happened it gave her the out she was looking for and ultimatly we ended up splitting. She went off and started to go through her list of replacements until one took the bait and she kept me around pretending to work on things with me until things with them got more serious.

That sounds like a very plausible theory, and I personally believe it to be true, for the exception of the pretending part - going back to the childlike aspect, she was probably genuinely trying to work on it from her point of view, even though from our point of view it was pretending.


I just really wish she had the capacity to understand what has happened and the effect all of her actions had on me. We were a team and as soon as we got to the first hurdle in our relationship she made the choice to give up while I did my all to help push us forward. Really makes you think that nothing was real for her as i dont know how you can go from being utterly obsessed with me into in a new relationship within a couple oif weeks without a 2nd thought. All that being said is just BPD in a nutshell really.

Most borderlines have no capacity, some have limited capacity and their perception is very skewed.  They do not want to be alone, so the follow-on relationship will happened overly fast, too fast as you witnessed first hand.


I like to think she has moments where she would think about me/us and feel some type of way about it but again i do not think she has the capacity to do that. Shes got a new job, new guy around and less time to dwell on things so she might not even think about any of it. Im not 100% sure on how their mind works in terms of remorse and empathy as she showed very little though this whole process.

Bxrrows, be careful what you wish for, she will think of you from time to time, I've had two other borderlines attempt a recycle (exgf, and more recently an ex-therapist who used me as her own therapist/mentor and said she was BPD but recanted later on) months down the road for each.  Since you are on the detaching board, I will recommend, if and when this happens, not to engage, no matter how tempting this might be, as it will never get any better.  However, I have never met a borderline capable of showing genuine remorse, they all think they are empathic and can read emotions remarkably well, more so than most people, which will feel like empathy, but they do not understand the feelings accurately as their reasoning is very skewed, so it is not true empathy.

I hope you have gained some better understanding, let me know if you have any additional questions.

Take care with self-care.

SD

[Bxrrows]

I think you are correct with your statement about codependent traits even for myself, I was previously in a bad relationship and took 3 years of self sabotage with other people before i found my now ex with BPD. I noticed when i was in a relationship with both of these girls I would always put myself last as I felt like its my job to prioritise them and their job to prioritise me, so the fact both crumbled in simular ways is telling for how i treat relationships. When i am single, i am very self sufficient and always know people would be lucky to be with me. This might be something I have to look deeper into during my healing.

It sounds like you are very self-aware.  I know it took a bit for me to figure this out about myself, as I had a tendency to have variations of borderline women who aggressively pursued me even if I have had my wedding band on.  Simply put, "I attract CRAZY" - the common denominator was me, and I needed to figure out why - and apparently, according to my therapist, it is being codependent.  Speaking of therapists, do you have one, if not, I strongly suspect you may benefit from one, especially if it is covered by insurance - let me know if you are not and I can point you in several low-cost or even free direction to explore this about yourself.

I like to try and take my own emotion out of things and think logically when it comes to things like this, I understand emotions can cloud logical thinking and i am someone who feels the need to understand every aspect of these sorts of situations. It does get to a stage of being unhealthy which i know i need to work on but in this situation I need to give myself answers that she is unable to.

I have 2 days out of the 7 that are hellish at the moment. I am able to focus on other things for the most part to keep myself busy knowing that time is the only thing that will help with these feelings, but those 2 days i am completly engulfed with sadness and all i want to do is have reach out hoping she wants to reconcile. During one of my bad days this week i did end up applying for therapy through the NHS (I am from the UK so free healthcare) and have an appointment 2 weeks into the new year to get that moving. I am hoping this helps with figuring out my emotions as I do feel depressed currently and have been suffering from what I think might be insomnia. I keep myself busy but as soon as I am alone and try to sleep I find myself going over everything 1000 times and cannot think about anything else but her.

I do want to think that she was trying in her own way but now the clouds of trying to fix things have parted for me, she was just telling me she felt nothing and she was very numb during the whole process while I did all the talking. I would have to bombard her with questions in order to get a better understanding of what was going through her head as she could never find the words for me or seemed like even she understood what she was feeling. I really want to feel like she was trying but the only time she would be compasionate was at obscure, random  times that I suspect was after she had been doing something with this new guy and felt some form of way about knowing I was stil trying to work on things. It could have been anything from face time calls, having sex or him meeting her family, whatever they were doing was in my opinion the reason she was being reminiscent with me sporadicly which gave me false hope that we were working things out.

Bxrrows, be careful what you wish for, she will think of you from time to time, I've had two other borderlines attempt a recycle (exgf, and more recently an ex-therapist who used me as her own therapist/mentor and said she was BPD but recanted later on) months down the road for each.  Since you are on the detaching board, I will recommend, if and when this happens, not to engage, no matter how tempting this might be, as it will never get any better.  However, I have never met a borderline capable of showing genuine remorse, they all think they are empathic and can read emotions remarkably well, more so than most people, which will feel like empathy, but they do not understand the feelings accurately as their reasoning is very skewed, so it is not true empathy.

In a way knowing that im not completly out of her mind is something that I would like. I dont want to be just another person who she can toss aside without a 2nd thought as I do feel like I was different to the rest and was her first relationship that went on for an extended period of time problem free. She treated me poorly for an entire month before we split as I was not accepting being her punching bag anymore as I told myself it wil be get better with time and when it didnt I gave her an ultimatum that broke us up. I know she has most likely made up reasons to her new guy and her family about why i was awful, which will be completly fabricated and come from me now being painted black, but I hope she is not telling these lies and convincing herself that is reality. Her entire wardrobe I brought her, she has endless reminders scattered around her room from dried out flower petals in a jars, ornimants, teddy bears and a whole shoe box of train tickets we had from dates she wanted to keep. Assuming she has not already thrown all those momentos out I do hope she thinks about me with something other then hatred just because I put boundries in place.

The 27th marks a month of no contact for us but I am stupidly hopeful for her to unblock me and reach out to me for either christmas or new years as this was around the time when we started dating last year but I know in reality I am not going to hear from her for a while if ever without some motivation from my side. In the middle of January in the new year, if I do not hear anything from her or her family, my close friend who knows her will be reaching out to her directly for an update on the money she owes me (i know i have already accepted I am unlikely to see it but I was told I would hear something by that point so will look into it) and I think the plan is to get her to reach out to me directly as I dont want her to be able to avoid the mess she has made by going through other people. In a petty way if things have developed with this new guy I low key want to put a bit of stress on that relation as well, it may be childish but I am just doing my be to be honest on these posts.

I apprecaite everyones insight so far and will keep giving updates as time goes forward. Happy Holidays to all and hope to hear more of your advice <3

Bxrrows

[SaltyDawg]

I like to try and take my own emotion out of things and think logically when it comes to things like this, I understand emotions can cloud logical thinking and i am someone who feels the need to understand every aspect of these sorts of situations. It does get to a stage of being unhealthy which i know i need to work on but in this situation I need to give myself answers that she is unable to.

I agree, being emotional will cloud things, and even if you think you have taken emotion out of it, it is still there.  I have recorded my pwBPD when she is having her episodes.  When she is away, I listen to them to figure out what the dynamic is going on, and I find that I too become quite emotional (albeit cool and calm) and missed the nuances of her emotional swing, until it was too late.  So, I now know what to look for as far as a preliminary mood swing starts, I have a greater chance of not triggering her all the way.  It is kind of like being on an icy road, going down a hill, you can tell with things that are starting to slip, and to stop, before she looses it and falls down the hill.


I have 2 days out of the 7 that are hellish at the moment. I am able to focus on other things for the most part to keep myself busy knowing that time is the only thing that will help with these feelings, but those 2 days i am completly engulfed with sadness and all i want to do is have reach out hoping she wants to reconcile. During one of my bad days this week i did end up applying for therapy through the NHS (I am from the UK so free healthcare) and have an appointment 2 weeks into the new year to get that moving. I am hoping this helps with figuring out my emotions as I do feel depressed currently and have been suffering from what I think might be insomnia. I keep myself busy but as soon as I am alone and try to sleep I find myself going over everything 1000 times and cannot think about anything else but her.

Public health is a good thing; however, I do believe they may limit the number of visits.  I am a strong advocate of therapy; however, between your appointments, visit here and other support groups for additional help.  I do know in Germany, the therapists are too overworked in their public health, you can only see them every 3-4 months, when ideally it should be once per week.

I too find have found my mind racing, and cannot think of anything else, for me this was more than a year, every waking hour of every day - it seem obsessive compulsive in the thinking to wrap one's mind around the problem and come up with a solution to a seemingly impossible problem.  The best I have come up with is to use some manipulation to nudge her in a good direction, and to change my communication with her.


I do want to think that she was trying in her own way but now the clouds of trying to fix things have parted for me, she was just telling me she felt nothing and she was very numb during the whole process while I did all the talking. I would have to bombard her with questions in order to get a better understanding of what was going through her head as she could never find the words for me or seemed like even she understood what she was feeling. I really want to feel like she was trying but the only time she would be compasionate was at obscure, random  times that I suspect was after she had been doing something with this new guy and felt some form of way about knowing I was stil trying to work on things. It could have been anything from face time calls, having sex or him meeting her family, whatever they were doing was in my opinion the reason she was being reminiscent with me sporadicly which gave me false hope that we were working things out.

Borderlines have the emotional capacity of a young child, their thought processes have not matured to the point like an adult, so they don't know what they are thinking, and if they do, it does not make sense to an adult's perspective.  They have the basic, primeval instincts; love/sex and hate/cold shoulder with a lot of impulsivity of a small child; however, they lack the more refined emotions like self-reflection, remorse and empathy, even though they can read emotions remarkably well wich will give the illusion of empathy.




In a way knowing that im not completly out of her mind is something that I would like. I dont want to be just another person who she can toss aside without a 2nd thought as I do feel like I was different to the rest and was her first relationship that went on for an extended period of time problem free.

Nobody wants to be tossed aside.  She will think of you not unlike a preschooler will think of a former friend that did something to upset them.  She will toss you aside just as easy as a preschooler can toss aside their playmate at daycare.


She treated me poorly for an entire month before we split as I was not accepting being her punching bag anymore as I told myself it will be get better with time and when it didnt I gave her an ultimatum that broke us up.

I have told my wife on numerous times not to use me as her emotional 'punching bag'.  I told her I would be a shoulder to cry on, though.  It does not get better with time, in fact the opposite is generally true, UNLESS she is self-aware of her actions, even if in a very illogical way, like mine does.


I know she has most likely made up reasons to her new guy and her family about why i was awful, which will be completly fabricated and come from me now being painted black, but I hope she is not telling these lies and convincing herself that is reality. Her entire wardrobe I brought her, she has endless reminders scattered around her room from dried out flower petals in a jars, ornimants, teddy bears and a whole shoe box of train tickets we had from dates she wanted to keep. Assuming she has not already thrown all those momentos out I do hope she thinks about me with something other then hatred just because I put boundries in place.

She will have changed her facts to what you will know as a false narrative in order to match her feelings.  I can only comment on my uBPD/uNPD-exgf who ruminated on prior relationships (my current uBPD/uOCPDw doesn't do this with her previous relationships, she is very secretive on this), prior to me, she thought about them alot, all of the good that they did for her, and would compare them to me (why wasn't she with them though, I would eventually find out later when she monkey-branched to another).  They will think of you; however, not the way you would like to be thought of. 


The 27th marks a month of no contact for us but I am stupidly hopeful for her to unblock me and reach out to me for either christmas or new years as this was around the time when we started dating last year but I know in reality I am not going to hear from her for a while if ever without some motivation from my side.

I am sorry for this, I know you miss her.  However, you had to put up boundaries.  Perhaps write down a list of the positive and negatives of the relationship, in order to help you move forward.  If she does reach out to you in the next few days, you need to have a pretty good idea on how you want to handle this.  Do you want to be back with her, knowing if she does not have any idea of her issues and it will likely get worse - do you want to be treated the same again or worse?  Do what is best for you.


In the middle of January in the new year, if I do not hear anything from her or her family, my close friend who knows her will be reaching out to her directly for an update on the money she owes me (i know i have already accepted I am unlikely to see it but I was told I would hear something by that point so will look into it) and I think the plan is to get her to reach out to me directly as I dont want her to be able to avoid the mess she has made by going through other people. In a petty way if things have developed with this new guy I low key want to put a bit of stress on that relation as well, it may be childish but I am just doing my be to be honest on these posts.

Perhaps, make January, the last time you intentionally reach out to her, and then leave it alone.  I also hear you about putting stress on her new relationship - I did that for my replacement, anonymously, I probably saved that guy a lot of heartache; however, she found someone else after him, so it is a losing battle.  My advice, is she will do the same thing to him as she did for you, she will likely not learn, and she will never find peace.  You owe it to yourself to end this rumination, and move forward as you deserve better.


I apprecaite everyones insight so far and will keep giving updates as time goes forward. Happy Holidays to all and hope to hear more of your advice <3

I look forward to your updates.  Happy holidays to you too.  I will be offline starting Christmas eve until Friday.

Take care with self-care.

SD

[Bxrrows]

I tried to give myself some time away from this thread and focus on christmas with my family but everything still came back to this situation. I have ups and downs like normal but i do feel them getting less intense at time moves forward which im hopinhg will steadily deplete over time. My only worry at the moment is the small amount of progress i have made over the past month of no contact will be reset when I reach out in 2 weeks about money I am owed. This coupled with our anniversary being the 6th of Jan I hope it will not be as rough as I think it might be.

She didnt break no contact over christmas and I very highly doubt I will hear anything tonight for NYE so my next post will either confirm that or I will have a story about a conversation we have.

I have found myself looking over old messages more so during christmas and thinking of good times we had in the past. While these memories are still upseting knowing they are gone, I do not look at them with nearly as much emotion as I did a few weeks ago so I guess thats a sign of progress. I know that the things I am feeling sad about are more so about the plans of our future being torn apart along with the idea of what we could have been disapearing so suddenly.

I  know she does care for me even if her actions towards the end and post break up didnt show it. I remember that she did make comments to tell me during our relationship about how being with someone makes her BPD flare up. I think back now and wonder if I should have taken those comments more seriously but also think that it was out of my control. It does not matter on my actions or efforts to help her, its an ongoing feeling that she will either have to get comfortable with in relationships or run for the hills.

Its not been the healthiest coping mechanism but I do regularly check up on her social medias every few days on an alternate account. She has not posted anything since she posted her POV at a bar 3 weeks ago. She was never much of a person to post things regularly anyway but I have found some comfort in knowing she is not blasting her life online as seeing it will hurt me and it also gives me piece of mind that if she was in a relationship with this guy then she would want to post it just like she did with me.

After doing some research on attatchment styles I feel like she also fits a dismissive avoidant style as a lot of people with BPD show simularaties with. She is able to shut her emotions down and move on to an emotionless situationship as she gets the validation physically and emotionally that distract her from fallout of our relationship. While i think she is cold and does not care, in reality she is in a hightened state of fear and put a brick wall up around her feelings. Over time these people will start to feel safe again emotionally and begin to feel everything they put off during the initial relief stage post break up which is typically where the recycling phase comes in as they finally tackle what has happened. Until that happens I am sure she will be involved with someone so I guess if I want any genuine remorse or reconcile it will not happen for a while.

Maybe I am using that as a way to cope with things but it seems logical to me so your thoughts are apprecaited. Wishing you all a happy new year.

Bxrrows

[SaltyDawg]

Bxrrows,

   It sounds like your time away from this thread was a bit of self-care for you, it is not healthy to obsessively ruminate on the past. 

   I would suggest on using coping methods when dealing with the money you are owed, and what would have been your upcoming 1st year anniversary.  If you mentally prepare for this, you can do hypothetical 'what if' type scenarios in your mind, that way you will be better equipped to handle these when they happen.

Since you didn't have any messages from her for Christmas, and I am assuming NYE/D either since we have not heard from you, she is looking forward to her impulsive ways.  It is good that when you look at her old messages, while still upsetting, they do not have as much impact on you as they did before as time marches on, and sooner or later it will become a more distant memory.

Regarding her comments on being BPD - they have all or nothing thinking.  Hindsight is always clearer than when you are in the thick of things.  If she shared with you that she is BPD, then looking back you could have done more to learn about it; however, this is now in the past. 

I'm glad that you recognize secretly following her on social media is not the healthiest coping mechanism.  Consider weaning yourself from this as time moves forward, as no good can come of being stuck in the past especially if she is posting about your replacement.  I am glad she is not engaging in a smear campaign as so many of them do, either to smear it in your face, or smear it for everyone to see.

Regarding how she will behave in the future - her past behaviors should be a pretty good indicator of her future behaviors.  I think your assessment is pretty good, just be mindful of how she is feeling and try not to trigger yourself and/or her if and when you happen to interact with her again.

Be sure to do some self-care, and take care.

SD

[Bxrrows]

It is not specifically this thread that hurts me but I do find myself coming here to post when I have my darker days as posting does seem to help me process my emotions. I do think i subconciously group this thread with those feelings for that exact reason so a detox is sometimes helpful time to time.

What would have been 1 year anniversary, is in 2 days now and i dont feel like i will be too upset about it knowing that it would have only been our first and we would not have anything specific to look back on as popping the question was relativly uneventful. The harder part will be the plans we would have had as we did mention booking a trip over that weekend to celebrate.

Since you didn't have any messages from her for Christmas, and I am assuming NYE/D either since we have not heard from you, she is looking forward to her impulsive ways.  It is good that when you look at her old messages, while still upsetting, they do not have as much impact on you as they did before as time marches on, and sooner or later it will become a more distant memory.

What did you mean with the part about "she is looking forward to her impulsive ways"? You are correct though, i did not hear anything new years day either as I expected and she has not posted anything on social media in a while, not even through christmas or nye. The fact I did not hear anything on either of those dates tells me that our anniversary will be no different, I am not expecting anything at all but still feel like I will be disappointed when I hear nothing. I was thinking maybe I do something for myself on that date as a self care treat to get through it with ease.

I am still having my dark days as I expect but i almost feel euphoric after them, every bad day I have seems to push me forward to care a lot less about everything and accept my life for what it is now. I am currently between work and have been since a little before the break up so it has kind of been the focal point of my life as I did not have anything to distract me.

I also do not remember if i mentioned before but I did actually have a stress induced seizure following the start of no contact as a mix of neglecting my health with food and water across a few days, along with the stress from everything overwhelming me. I was out for about 30 mins and hospitalised overnight. I did reach out to her sister to inform her and my ex of my health but heard nothing from my ex apart from a phone call at 1am a week later saying she felt bad for how shes been treating me. I mentioned my seizure and she asked about it as if it was a small event or an after thought. Still processing how after a year together the fact i almost died was not something she showed much concern for. I get her being detatched from me as a partner but as a human i thought she would have shown more concern.

In 2 weeks time I will be breaking our almost 2 months of no contact to enquire about the money she owes. She herself told me she would be reaching out about it along with her mother echoing the same sentiment but i have no faith in either of them. If i hear nothing in the next 2 weeks I will be reaching out about it. I want her to have to deal with me directly as I dont want her mum to be her middleman to help her avoid responsibilty, i want her to face her mess after the way she has treated me. I got her to block me on text and all the social media we used to mainly comunicate on. My plan was for my friend to reach out to her and ask her what the best way for me to contact her about the money would be. Im not sure what the best play would be in order to get her to interact with me directly without giving up the power of getting things to be done the way she wants to when in reality, she owes me so it should be on my terms.

Any contact we have would not be to rekindle anything, it would be purely about the money. If she took it upon herself to develop the conversation further, i would be open to it and would do my best to act warm to not trigger her or me.

Thoughts on how to handle breaking no contact would be very helpful as I am having 2nd thoughts about the best way to approach this.

Bxrrows

[SaltyDawg]

Bxrrows,

What would have been 1 year anniversary, is in 2 days now and i dont feel like i will be too upset about it knowing that it would have only been our first and we would not have anything specific to look back on as popping the question was relativly uneventful. The harder part will be the plans we would have had as we did mention booking a trip over that weekend to celebrate.

I hope you didn't make any reservations, and if you did you were able to refund it.  If it is too late for a refund, move the date a few months out, and then try for a refund a few days later after you move the date.  I can see how this will be quite painful for you in 2 days time.  Perhaps, make other plans to distract you from this.  I agree with you since she did not reach out to you on Christmas nor NYE/D she will likely not contact you on the 1 yr anniversary either. 


What did you mean with the part about "she is looking forward to her impulsive ways"?
My error, sometimes my cursor jumps (me hitting the touchpad on the laptop) so I mistyped it, and didn't proof it enough, and the 'edit' feature has not yet returned after the hack last year and the post/preview button are close together and was unable to edit.


I also do not remember if i mentioned before but I did actually have a stress induced seizure following the start of no contact as a mix of neglecting my health with food and water across a few days, along with the stress from everything overwhelming me. I was out for about 30 mins and hospitalised overnight. I did reach out to her sister to inform her and my ex of my health but heard nothing from my ex apart from a phone call at 1am a week later saying she felt bad for how shes been treating me. I mentioned my seizure and she asked about it as if it was a small event or an after thought. Still processing how after a year together the fact i almost died was not something she showed much concern for. I get her being detatched from me as a partner but as a human i thought she would have shown more concern.

I couldn't find where you mentioned a seizure specifically.  I am sorry you had such a severe reaction to the NC - I had one and only panic attack once I realized my wife was a borderline after my therapist gave me a book that described my wife way too well - what happened to you sounds way scarier.  Perhaps the part of how you almost died when you had a seizure was not clearly communicated to her, even though it is too late to change this, perhaps if she does ever reach out to you again, give her some grace as most people do not equate a seizure to a near death experience.  I hope you are fully recovered from your seizure as that sounds quite serious, be sure to take care of yourself.


In 2 weeks time I will be breaking our almost 2 months of no contact to enquire about the money she owes. She herself told me she would be reaching out about it along with her mother echoing the same sentiment but i have no faith in either of them. If i hear nothing in the next 2 weeks I will be reaching out about it. I want her to have to deal with me directly as I dont want her mum to be her middleman to help her avoid responsibilty, i want her to face her mess after the way she has treated me. I got her to block me on text and all the social media we used to mainly comunicate on. My plan was for my friend to reach out to her and ask her what the best way for me to contact her about the money would be. Im not sure what the best play would be in order to get her to interact with me directly without giving up the power of getting things to be done the way she wants to when in reality, she owes me so it should be on my terms.

As I and others indicated previously, don't expect her to pay anything back.  If you do receive payment it will be a pleasant surprise.  I know my exgf, who owed me $50k in 2000 was unable to pay any of the unsecured loans I gave her back - I took the loss and I was free and clear of her and didn't have to deal with her any more, at the time I could afford that hit in my wallet, and chalked it up to an expensive lesson to learn.

If you insist on contacting her for the money, I am not sure the best way is, unless you have written documentation that she owes you this money, consider it a loss.  If you do have documentation, a small claims court (if available) would be the way to go if your friend idea does not work and you are only interested in 'purely' recovering your money that is owed to you.

Thoughts on how to handle breaking no contact would be very helpful as I am having 2nd thoughts about the best way to approach this.

Since you are blocked on everything, calling her on your friend's phone, might be the way to go.  But please do not expect anything good to come of this.

Take care.  Do some self-care, as I do not wish for you to have another stress induced seizure.

SD

[once removed]

Im not sure what the best play would be in order to get her to interact with me directly without giving up the power of getting things to be done the way she wants to when in reality, she owes me so it should be on my terms.
...
i want her to face her mess after the way she has treated me.

Bxrrows,

i spent a lot of time in the aftermath of my relationship trying to create closure on my terms. wanting my belongings back. wanting my ex to feel regret for the way she treated me. i never got those belongings, and while ill never know what her process was like, i never got her to face anything.

the hard thing is that breakups just dont usually play out in a way that is most favorable to us and our feelings.

getting your belongings, or saying your piece, isnt going to resolve the hurt that youre feeling. even if she were to acknowledge your wounds and apologize for them, it wouldnt change the circumstances.

think about what it is you want to accomplish here, first and foremost.

is your ultimate priority getting your belongings? then forcing a confrontation is not likely to achieve that. and you should know that trying may result in a lot of prolonged attachment and frustration if it doesnt occur.

is your ultimate priority confronting her with your pain? consider what it is you want to say. try putting it to paper, and sitting on it for a while. if you decide you want to send it, you can, any time.

Im not sure what the best play would be in order to get her to interact with me directly without giving up the power

i wouldnt recommend approaching this as a power battle. thats just a continuation of the conflict from the relationship...just keeps us attached to the wounds.

post breakup navigation can be tricky. you dont want to do anything youre gonna regret, or kick yourself for, or anything thats just going to prolong detaching.

[Bxrrows]

Thanks for the replies guys, i love seeing other peoples views on these things to give me better ideas of approaches.

You are right though SD, she does not know the severity of my seizure as I did not even know myself until I was recovering as my family did not want to stress me out more then I already was. After I found out that it could have een life thretening we had begun no contact and did not have the chance to inform her. I have fully recovered from it now and it was a combination of dehydration, not eating and stress that made my body give out. That was enough to tell me I needed to take a step back and start taking care of myself better. I think if our conversation warrents bringing up the seizure then I will let her know about the details but feel like it adds nothing to the current circumstances at this point in time, even though I want her to know.

To clear up things that might have been misinterpreted from my previous posts. The money she owes was something that I have already mentally departed with and do not expect to see a penny of it. However, this money was owed to me from our vacation we booked in July and we broke up a week after we returned from this vacation in October. From July until October she payed me a sum every month and payed off half in that time, after the break up happened she also lost her job and told me that even though we had broken up and she lost her job, when she gets a new one she will pay me the rest of the money owed. She managed to get a job in December and her mum told me a few weeks ago the payments will start back up in January until we are straight.

While I do not think I will see the money and know January is a tight month for everyone financially, I was told that I would hear something in the new year and if I do not hear anything I will reach out just before the 20th, to make sure that when she is payed from work in the following 10 days she knows that a payment is due to go to me. Its also a way for me to break no contact and see how she will react now we are out of the toxic cycle we had post break up. I am not looking for closure as I have given myself that through my own deduction but if she did want to move the conversation to more then just money I would be open to seeing what she has to say as I have said everything I need to for the most part. None of the chat from my side will be anything other then 'purely business'.

I feel like she went into a relief stage after the no contact started so she has had 2 months to see other people and not have the stress of our situation knocking on the door mentally everyday. I would like her to be at a point know where she is curious about me and maybe even ask how I am and devlop the conversation past the basics of what we need to speak about. I have no reason to reach out other then to follow up on what I was told from her before we started no contact.

Also where i mentioned about giving up power, i know pwBPD typically like to be in control and I almost feel like the fact im reaching out will be mistaken for me making a play to win her back or something when all i want is an update on the money. This is why i feel my wording and approach should be something I think through before attempting to contact her. Of course I would love nothing more then for her to gush over me and beg for me back but I know that will not happen ontop of the fact that I dont think I even want her anymore. The last time we had contact I was a pathetic mess who gave off the impression that i needed her to survive, when now I am much better mentally and have come to terms with her being this different person who i do not recognise.

is your ultimate priority getting your belongings? then forcing a confrontation is not likely to achieve that. and you should know that trying may result in a lot of prolonged attachment and frustration if it doesnt occur.

I am not looking for a confrontation, i just want her to have to converse with me directly about what we need to speak about. I also know that whatever guy she is with at the moment will see her talking to her ex and I hope it puts some form of strain on whatever they have as well. She has a tendancy to get her mother to handle things for her, such as doctors appointments and things so I feel like she will try to palm the money talks with me to her mum instead of doing it herself. It might sound petulant but I do have animosity from how she treated me towards the end/following our break up so creating drama or causing some stress this way is something I would like to do.

Bxrrows

[SaltyDawg]

Bxrrows,

   Thank you for sharing your explanation.

   While having curiosity about your ex is natural, you are also tempting fate if you communicate beyond BIFF on the matter - there is a chance to reconnect as a borderline personality when in the love bombing mode is exceptionally seductive and intoxicating.

   Use wise-mind when contacting her, keep it purely focused on the money/belongings - keep your distance unless you want to fall back into that trap.  Is it possible to have someone hold you accountable?

   Good luck, and take care.

SD

[Bxrrows]

All of this is obviously speculation as I dont even know if she will be contacting me about everything or try and speak to me via my friend or her mother. I just want to be ready for a conversation if it does go the way i intend. I will also not be going outside of the purpose I am reaching out about in the first place unless she moves it other ways and will maintain BIFF during the conversation.

After I gave her the ultimatum that ended up with us breaking up, she knew I was taking it a lot harder than her and did constantly ask if I was okay, where I usually responded 'terrible' or 'awful' which i now have second thoughts about saying. I am hopeful if/when we do next interact she would be curious enough to check in on how I have been doing or reopen communication. Main reason being I am not entirely sure on what the best approach should be if this happens. Should i say how the break up almost killed me and i have since spiraled into a depression that required me to check into therapy (not in this way obviously). Or do i portray myself as someone who is doing a lot better recently and say positive things going on in my life? Both of these are true, but coming back to the power dynamic, should i give her more ammo to get some sick validation out of how much suffering I have been doing or should i come across in a way that lets her know that, she no longer being such an integral part of my life is a good thing and im better off without her.

I know what i say should be based on what I want to get from the conversation but I am not entirely sure on my own intentions at this point as I typically post here when i am feeling more sappy before bed as I am right now. I want her to give me any sign, no matter how small that she does care for me in some way. I just like to think she would be curious and think about me from time to time as it has almost been 2 months no contact the relief stage for her might be nearing the end. 

As an extension of that, I was the one who asked her to block me on social media and my number because the month following I would still talk to her almost everyday and couldnt control myself, even when i knew it was time to stop. Maybe she has not reached out since to honour my request of needing no contact to heal? Maybe she does feel some type of way about everything and is waiting for me to make the first move to reconnect? Or maybe im hopelessly optimistic and still try to see the good in someone who time and time again showed that i will never be enough?

Sorry for the blabbering post but these are my thoughts on things tonight.

Bxrrows

[SaltyDawg]

Bxrrows,

   Thanks for responding back.

   Previously you indicated you had an appointment to start therapy for the 2nd week of January, is this still on?

   I am going to highlight a lot of what you said...

I know what i say should be based on what I want to get from the conversation but I am not entirely sure on my own intentions at this point as I typically post here when i am feeling more sappy before bed as I am right now. I want her to give me any sign, no matter how small that she does care for me in some way. I just like to think she would be curious and think about me from time to time as it has almost been 2 months no contact the relief stage for her might be nearing the end. 

As an extension of that, I was the one who asked her to block me on social media and my number because the month following I would still talk to her almost everyday and couldnt control myself, even when i knew it was time to stop. Maybe she has not reached out since to honour my request of needing no contact to heal? Maybe she does feel some type of way about everything and is waiting for me to make the first move to reconnect? Or maybe im hopelessly optimistic and still try to see the good in someone who time and time again showed that i will never be enough?

No worries on the blabbering you are letting your feelings surface on this matter and it can be good to vent.

I think it is pretty clear that you have a lot of unresolved issues where you feel the need to be validated for your efforts into this relationship by this young lady.  I would highly recommend sharing that in your upcoming therapy appointment in order to get a deeper understanding of this.

In any event, I wish you the best of luck in trying to get this resolved in the next week or two.  However, if you cannot, please be kind to yourself, and 'let it go', as it will be increasingly unlikely if you will have the closure that you desire on this relationship.

Please be sure to do self-care in order to take your mind to a healthier place.

Take care.

SD

[once removed]

but coming back to the power dynamic, should i give her more ammo to get some sick validation out of how much suffering I have been doing or should i come across in a way that lets her know that, she no longer being such an integral part of my life is a good thing and im better off without her.

Bxrrows, the power dynamic ends when the relationship does.

there is no power any longer, to be gained, or to be lost. accepting that is the first step in detaching; otherwise, youre just battling with your wounds.

what would the authentic Bxrrows do?

[Bxrrows]

So my therapy assessment is on the 16th of January so i will be evaluated and then told about the next steps for what will happen. This will also be around the same time I plan to reach out so I will see if they have any advice for me reaching out during that meeting.

After spending so much time fighting for us post break up and processing everything during no contact I realised that from the day we offically split I was given nothing. No indication of deeper problems her side of why she feels no reason for us to make amends. No real feelings about the situation just pure numbness and until this day I still have nothing from her. I would just have to ask 1000 questions until she gave me a yes about being on the right track. This lead me to create my own answers/closure for my questions, looking more into BPD and attatchment styles to get a better understanding of what happened as she was clearly not giving me it.

I might have mentioned this previously but when no contact began it was because I gave her a call when I was having a bad night, it was just to tell her I loved her. But she ignored my call and had a guy over who she was sleeping with in our bed. This broke me and she told me over text the next morning "she is sorry i am having a bad time, she cares about me a lot but i need to move on and heal, she is sort of seeing someone so you just need to move on". This prompted a phone call where she told me she only started seeing him a week ago but she really likes him and he has already met her nieces/family, which was the thing we used to do every weekend together during our relationship. I was obviously heartbroken as I was under the impression we were trying to work things out still and didnt understand how she could move on so to sleeping with a new person so quickly but to introduce him to her family after only speaking for a week was the hardest part. Obviously I know now it had to be going on longer then a week for things to esculate that far but if anything that makes things worse because at that point we had only been offically broken up for around 3 weeks so it would have been instantly or an overlap in our relationship. This event was what has done the most damage to me, I can handle someone treating me poorly and being bitter/hateful towards the end of a relationship but for her to do this was so painful.

She did tell me when we broke up she wanted to be on her own and 'work on herself', but with her new 'lover' being involved with her family and her telling me how she liked him a lot, I feel like she had started building something more meaningful then just a hook up with this guy for a distraction. The weird part is, she is pretty active to post on social media during a relationship and posted me a little before I even became offical with her. However, she has not posted anything of the 2 of them anywhere nor has she posted any stories, her social media is scarce for stories apart from one selfie upload at the start of december. Would this indicate she is just in a rebound like I thought it was?

Regardless of if the guy she was with when we went into no contact is still in the picture or not she cannot be alone, so I suspect if this guy is gone she has already found another person to take his place as she did with me. I have also noticed recently signs of being unblocked and reblocked as her profile pics have updated for me that she changed a number of weeks ago. I thought this only occurs after youve been unblocked but I might be wrong.

For me I am hoping our conversation about money can evolve into her giving me a better idea of what happened from her side, I am not sure how much good this will do me as it might only reopen wounds I have been working on healing but even to get the slightest idea of what went on in her head I feel would benefit me right now. She did mention she doesn't love me anymore during our post break up arguments but she also kept saying "its too far gone" whenever I would give an idea for a plan to get back on track. I am thinking now this might have been because she was sleeping with this guy a while before I knew and she felt some form of guilt about getting back with me knowing what she had been doing. After this contact attempt I will be suggesting a payment plan getting set up for fixed amounts each month to limit contact but wil be sticking to BIFF as best I can.

I will be bringing this up in therapy when it starts but for now this is my best release when it comes to getting my thoughts out. I apprecaite you all as always. Any thoughts on this stuff does a lot to help.

Bxrrows

[SaltyDawg]

Bxrrows

   Thank you for coming back and sharing some more.

   I will keep this one brief and limit my response, as you have a therapy session in a few days time on the 16th and most of your 1000 questions can be better answered there.  I would encourage you to go into therapy with your questions.

   Circling back to your ex, now that you have share a bit more, it is clear to me that she has deliberately moved on with the new guy, a new 'toy' so to speak, and if you continue to ruminate on this is will become increasingly painful to yourself, especially since you seem to be focusing on the part of overlap.  Unless you have irrefutable proof, you are only guessing here, as a borderline can drop a person, and move on to another inside of a week.  Somethings in life are better left alone.

   She is her own person, and she needs to live with the consequences of her actions - and right now she is preoccupied with your replacement.  The only bit of comfort you might get out of this, is that she will do this to the new guy with another new guy, she leave a trail of destroyed men in her wake.  The bad part of this, she is likely incredibly empty inside 

   I also am of the opinion that you are over-analyzing the situation, and grasping on anything that may indicate she will come back to you and give you an explanation.

So my therapy assessment is on the 16th of January so i will be evaluated and then told about the next steps for what will happen. This will also be around the same time I plan to reach out so I will see if they have any advice for me reaching out during that meeting.

[...]

I will be bringing this up in therapy when it starts but for now this is my best release when it comes to getting my thoughts out. I apprecaite you all as always. Any thoughts on this stuff does a lot to help.

   Please be kind to yourself in the upcoming days and do some self-care, see your therapist, and I am hoping you will get some closure from that visit.

   Take care.

SD

[Bxrrows]

Thanks SD, i have apprecaited your insight over the past weeks with my endless theories.

My life outside of my posts is not as obsessive and consumed with her as it might come across. I only tend to think about her or re-live these situations late at night which i am slowly trying to ease myself off of doing. While i do have a lot to speak about with my therapist, I have uncovered during this process that I have a deep need to feel validated for certain things. I feel a need for my ex to know how out of my way I went for her and that she has hurt me so deeply with everything she has done. I personally have not had a hard home life or anything that would have made me feel this need for validation. But the 2 adult relationships I have had, both were broken people and ended with betrayal and discard. I have you to thank for realising my own flaws and will be working on them moving forward.

You hit the nail on the head as the overlap is the main part for me that I struggle to come to terms with. I was cheated on a lot in my previous relationship before her and I think I focus on the part of her moving on more then our real issues during our relationship because of how betrayed her discarding me so easily feels. I know that I dont want her anymore, I miss the companionship that we all feel the loss of when we get out of a relationship and know that if somehow we did reconcile we would only be repeating a cycle of the ending months of our relationship over again along with me having no trust for her at all. I want her to feel certain things I dont think she is capable of and need to learn to let go instead of pining over minute details that really dont change anything in my life now.

I also am of the opinion that you are over-analyzing the situation, and grasping on anything that may indicate she will come back to you and give you an explanation.

You are 100% correct here and know I have come across quite desperate at times because these posts and my upcoming break of NC in 2 weeks is all I have to grasp onto before I subconciously allow myself to let go of this situation. While she is out living life, more or less uneffected, I sit ruminating over everything most nights when she is the one who treated me so poorly. She is the one who lost me not the other way around plus, she is the person who caused all these issues and does not deserve this much of my energy anymore.

This will most likely be one of my lasts posts as i hope therapy can help with the depression and getting myself into a healthy midset where she no longer has a grasp on me. I might post updates on therapy here and there but will defo look back at this thread to see how my journey has progressed.

Again thanks to all that gave some insight, you have all helped me more then you can know, especially to SD for putting up with me and my relentless questions haha.

All the best,

Bxrrows

[SaltyDawg]

Bxrrows,

Good day.  Today is the 16th, I am curious if you might want to share an update with us, as today you had a your therapist scheduled.

My life outside of my posts is not as obsessive and consumed with her as it might come across. I only tend to think about her or re-live these situations late at night which i am slowly trying to ease myself off of doing. While i do have a lot to speak about with my therapist, I have uncovered during this process that I have a deep need to feel validated for certain things. I feel a need for my ex to know how out of my way I went for her and that she has hurt me so deeply with everything she has done. I personally have not had a hard home life or anything that would have made me feel this need for validation. But the 2 adult relationships I have had, both were broken people and ended with betrayal and discard. I have you to thank for realising my own flaws and will be working on them moving forward.

I highlighted two needs that you have stated.  I can understand fully for the need to feel validated considering how far you went out of your way to care for her, only to hurt you 'so  deeply'.

The other is that you have had 2 adult relationships, and both of them were with broken people - you need to figure out why this is, your therapist should be able to help you with this.  I know I have this very trait, as I went from the fire (my uBPD/uNPD/+exgf) to the frying pan (my uBPD/uOCPDw).  Once you have addressed this, within therapy, then your future relationship(s) can be healther.

I also wish you all the best in your life's journey, wherever it takes you.

Be sure to take care of yourself with self care.

SD

[Bxrrows]

Good day.  Today is the 16th, I am curious if you might want to share an update with us, as today you had a your therapist scheduled.

You are right SD, today was the day i have been waiting a month for and finally got to speak to a therapist!

Today was more of an assessment to go over the basic questions they need answered and asked for more detail about my situation. I went over the relationship timeline from when we met to the present day and highlighted the main things I am struggling to come to terms with along with the fallout from the relationship and the mental state I have been left in. Everything we spoke about seemed to indicate that I have depression. With this my social anxiety, that I have managed to keep under control for the better part of 15 years, flaring up as a side effect from the depression. Medication is what they have instructed me to seek to better handle both mental problems i face. They have also put me forward to enter cognitive behavioural therapy and an admin will be in touch with me soon when a slot opens up for me to start offically.

I came away feeling proud that I was able to start getting my head straight and it also gave me more motivation to end my career break and seek a new job which I have been in touch with a few places over this past week.

In terms of updates on the situation with my ex we have had some things happen. She posted her first instagram story with her rebound who it turns out was exactly who I thought it was, the guy from her old work i made her block months before we broke up. The photo was a day out with him and one of her her neices with some action shots at the arcade and selfies of the 3 of them in a collage style, pretty much the same sort of family time we would have while together. I know this means and changes nothing to me but just confirms my gut feeling of who it was. Just made me laugh about how she would call him repulsive and ugly while laughing about how he would never have a chance with her while we were together and now he is her new man.

With breaking no contact, I have also hatched a plan with help from my dad who gave me some ideas of how to play things. Clearly any sort of emotional bind she has to me is gone and I would never get though to her on an emotional level from being painted black, but I would be able to have an effect financially.

She already had no money and lost her job shortly after we broke up. Over christmas she got her new job and this month is her first proper paycheck so i bet money right now is very tight for her. She has always been bad with money so i am fully expecting her to have nothing spare for me when I message her. The money she owes me I already mentally let go of but the last thing she said to me is that she will restart payments this month so i  will be checking up sometime this week, before this months payday to confirm if she is sending anything. That way I get first dibs on a portion of her paycheck before she goes to pay off credit cards and stuff. My dad told me to reach out and ask about the money, when she sends less then she previously told me or nothing at all, I ask for her exact payday date and when I can expect a payment to come through. Next month (Feb) I will check on her payday to see if the money is sent through to my account and if I see nothing again, I will be telling her that after 5 months without payment I will be taking her to small claims court. This I have already looked into and would only cost me roughly £60 to set up and they will be the ones pestering her to pay me. I have texts that confirm her agreement to pay me the exact figure we discussed as well as dates when she told me I can expect everything to come through. I also have bank statements that show she was sending me over money each payday when we were previously together so I have more then enough for a case if I need to go down that route. This would either give her the reality check to pay me back in full...or if she fails to make payment with a court order, her credit will be ruined for the next 5+ years and it will be near to impossible for her to find her own place or purchase a car when she passes her test. Either way I get paid and hopefully cause some stress for her and her rebound in the process.

You might ask me "Bxrrows surely its not worth all that effort just for money you dont really need?", you would be 100% correct and I do know how childish it might seem but I want to get my own back in some kind of way and feel like this is the most damage I can do without setting myself back too far with my mental health recovery. While I initially thought about contacting her myself about money as a last ditch effort to try and cause some form of drama in her current love life, my dad gave me this idea that I think I am going to go with. If all of her spare money each month is going to me, either by our current agreement or from a court order, I would cause enough of a racket to make her rebound pay for anything they do or cause some sort of stress for her wondering how she will navigate paying me back along with all her previous debt. The fact she has put me into this mental state, caused a stress induced seizure and potentially cheated on me makes me not feel too badly about this plan.

Any thoughts are appreciated as always and it was great to hear from you again SD, appreciate you checking in my friend.

Bxrrows

[SaltyDawg]

Everything we spoke about seemed to indicate that I have depression. With this my social anxiety, that I have managed to keep under control for the better part of 15 years, flaring up as a side effect from the depression. Medication is what they have instructed me to seek to better handle both mental problems i face. They have also put me forward to enter cognitive behavioural therapy and an admin will be in touch with me soon when a slot opens up for me to start offically.

I came away feeling proud that I was able to start getting my head straight and it also gave me more motivation to end my career break and seek a new job which I have been in touch with a few places over this past week.

It sounds like your session went quite well and has identified several things to work on, and you have a good plan.  I am also proud of you for doing this.  Keep up the good work.

In terms of updates on the situation with my ex we have had some things happen. She posted her first instagram story with her rebound who it turns out was exactly who I thought it was, the guy from her old work i made her block months before we broke up. The photo was a day out with him and one of her her neices with some action shots at the arcade and selfies of the 3 of them in a collage style, pretty much the same sort of family time we would have while together. I know this means and changes nothing to me but just confirms my gut feeling of who it was. Just made me laugh about how she would call him repulsive and ugly while laughing about how he would never have a chance with her while we were together and now he is her new man.

Isn't it ironic how your 'gut' feeling turned out to be true.  This should show you that you can trust your 'gut' feeling on these kinds of things.


With breaking no contact, I have also hatched a plan with help from my dad who gave me some ideas of how to play things. Clearly any sort of emotional bind she has to me is gone and I would never get though to her on an emotional level from being painted black, but I would be able to have an effect financially.

I do like the fact you are enlisting your father's advice; however, I do think you will likely be disappointed if you follow-through on this plan.  The reasoning being ...

She already had no money and lost her job shortly after we broke up.

As we say in the states, "no money, no honey"...

Over christmas she got her new job and this month is her first proper paycheck so i bet money right now is very tight for her. She has always been bad with money so i am fully expecting her to have nothing spare for me when I message her. The money she owes me I already mentally let go of but the last thing she said to me is that she will restart payments this month so i  will be checking up sometime this week, before this months payday to confirm if she is sending anything. That way I get first dibs on a portion of her paycheck before she goes to pay off credit cards and stuff. My dad told me to reach out and ask about the money, when she sends less then she previously told me or nothing at all, I ask for her exact payday date and when I can expect a payment to come through. Next month (Feb) I will check on her payday to see if the money is sent through to my account and if I see nothing again, I will be telling her that after 5 months without payment I will be taking her to small claims court. This I have already looked into and would only cost me roughly £60 to set up and they will be the ones pestering her to pay me. I have texts that confirm her agreement to pay me the exact figure we discussed as well as dates when she told me I can expect everything to come through. I also have bank statements that show she was sending me over money each payday when we were previously together so I have more then enough for a case if I need to go down that route. This would either give her the reality check to pay me back in full...or if she fails to make payment with a court order, her credit will be ruined for the next 5+ years and it will be near to impossible for her to find her own place or purchase a car when she passes her test. Either way I get paid and hopefully cause some stress for her and her rebound in the process.

To me, this feels like 'revenge', the 'cause some stress' bit.  If it is only a few hundred quid, I wouldn't be chasing it, if it means having to remain in contact with a mentally ill person who betrayed me.  Being mindful, that she is emotionally unstable - how do you think this is going to affect her?  Do you think she will come after you in some way, with made-up lies, as pwBPD are notorious for twisting facts to match their feelings, and these twisted facts (false narratives) are often very believable.  What if the new guy is some kind of wacko, and he does something stupid to you, based on her twisted version of facts?  IMHO, it is not worth that risk.

If your goal is to reconnect with her, it will have the opposite effect.  If you care for her, how is putting her on the street with no car, as you are predicting, an act of caring?

You might ask me "Bxrrows surely its not worth all that effort just for money you dont really need?", you would be 100% correct and I do know how childish it might seem but I want to get my own back in some kind of way and feel like this is the most damage I can do without setting myself back too far with my mental health recovery. While I initially thought about contacting her myself about money as a last ditch effort to try and cause some form of drama in her current love life, my dad gave me this idea that I think I am going to go with. If all of her spare money each month is going to me, either by our current agreement or from a court order, I would cause enough of a racket to make her rebound pay for anything they do or cause some sort of stress for her wondering how she will navigate paying me back along with all her previous debt. The fact she has put me into this mental state, caused a stress induced seizure and potentially cheated on me makes me not feel too badly about this plan.

I don't think doing an act of 'revenge' with a mentally ill person is a good thing to do - that is my personal opinion.  However, I will urge you to sleep on this for a few nights, as it sounds very impulsive, and make sure you are okay doing this, and then you do you even if it means leaving the impression that you enacting revenge on her.

Be sure to do self-care.

Take care.

SD

[Bxrrows]

So following my therapy session I got in touch with my GP and after my assessment I have been put onto some anti depresents. This will hopefully help me be able to better handle the depression from this whole situation and should tide me over until I can get my teeth into therapy. I am not too sure if it is the medication or just where I am at mentally now but I do not feel a sense of need for her to be in my life anymore. I do not feel like the person I fell in love with is around anymore and have accepted the fact that she has moved on for now even though I still half expect her to recycle me in the future.

I did decide to stick with the plan I previously mentioned but with a less sharp approach on the revenge part. I understand that any money I do get is a consolation from what I can only describe as the worst few months of my entire life and that should be my main goal with reaching out.

I ended up breaking no contact last Thursday and getting my friend to reach out with a simple message about her getting in touch with me to sort the money out. Her instant response was "why did he not message me himself?" so immediatly she was argumentative which I half expected. She then messaged me, while I was still unable to reply due to being blocked, to inform me that she did not forget about the money and she would be paying me on the last day of this month but it would not be a lot due to her not working all that much over christmas, my friend then asked her to unblock me so I could reply which she did. She then asked how much she owed and I told her the figure, she then tried to dispute the figure because she gave me some broken airpods to sell that i was obviously unable too. Then she told me that she would have the air pods back and I told her she can have them. I was then blocked again along with my friends number.

Seems that whatever story she has made up about me being the bad guy in this whole break up she now whole heartedly believes as all of her messages came across very argumentative for whatever reason. I did maintain BIFF and kept it strictly about the information I was trying to obtain which I am happy with. I did also notice the way she was texting/language she was using was very different so it did feel like speaking to an entirely different person. My guess is that her new friends or boyfriend speak like that and she is mirroring them now. I do feel slightly hurt from the fact she seemed like she forgot she had me blocked and that she forgot how much she owed me. Guess it goes to show that she is able to completly switch off her feelings and move on like nothing happened so i doubt she has given us much of a 2nd thought since we started no contact..

Seeing as I reached out, got a rough date that she gets paid and informed her that I do expect payment. I am happy with the way everything went for the most part and will be checking my account for payment over the next few months with little to no contact. The only reason I should need to interact with her from now on is if she sends me very small sums that drag out this payment plan.

Her new boyfriend is harmless, they both live over an hour away from me and from our interaction the other day I think she has already erased me from her memory with how she spoke to me so im not to worried about her trying to get me back for coming for my money. I would like the idea of us being able to reconcile and get back onto a path where we could eventually be back together. Its just i think that ship might have sailed as I feel less and less attatched everyday and she seemed so different from our short interaction last week.

My mention of court in my last post is more or less debt collection through a legal entity. I would be seeking their help to recoup the moeny she owes should she fail to pay me over the nex 2 months. I understand how it could be seen as an act of revenge but ultimatly this is about me getting my money back and if I can cause some stress in her new relationship while doing so then I do not feel too badly about it. When I said she has always had no money its more about how poor she is with money managment and spends it on pointless things she doesnt need. Getting my foot in the door now adds me to the list of her payments she needs to make before she can spend the rest on whatever she wants so reminding her about the money was my way of getting insurance that I have dibs.

Appreiciate you as always and hope your life is not as messy as this right now haha.

Bxrrows

[SaltyDawg]

Bxrrows,

   Thank you for sharing that you have been put on some antidepressants and seem to be doing better.

   I am glad you toned down your 'revenge' - it is nice to fantasize about getting revenge; however, you have to be mindful that she has a personality disorder and cannot help herself - other than a fleeting sense of justice on a disabled person who has wronged you, I cannot see any positive outcomes from something like this, other that some really bitter feelings directed towards you, and how that manifests can be unpredictable or over the top as they feel emotions so much stronger than we do.

   Thank you for the update on the repayment of the amount owed to you, and your plans on capturing some of those funds.  However, if you do follow through  on the small claims, since she cannot manage her money, you will have certainly eliminated any chance of reconciliation as you have expressed, "I would like the idea of us being able to reconcile and get back onto a path where we could eventually be back together. Its just i think that ship might have sailed as I feel less and less attached everyday and she seemed so different from our short interaction last week."

However, you have also indicated you feel less and less attached, and this detachment, which is a good thing.

Appreiciate you as always and hope your life is not as messy as this right now haha.

It is quite ironic you should mention this, my wife had a full blown borderline episode this past Tuesday, complete with projection of violence, full blown rage, and painted my daughter black as night, first one of this magnitude since 2022 which was directed at me at that time.  She was able to recover as I used some newly learned techniques on her, but it was still very impactful, and an ever-present reminder once a borderline, always a borderline, no matter how well it would appear she has control of her outward appearing symptoms.

I plan on asking my wife to tell her version of events to the couple's T, and then I will fill in the gaps of omitted facts and distortions, so I won't be called the bad guy for pointing this out about my wife was extremely abusive towards our daughter last week.  Hopefully some good will come out of this where my wife will become more self-aware of her issues, so she can renew her efforts of fixing herself.

Wish me luck, and hopefully my wife will see the errors of her ways, and take appropriate corrective action.

Take care.

SD

[Bxrrows]

Yeah, i am happy that going onto medication so far seems to be helping, other then a few side effects such as light insomnia and anxious episodes as the medication wears off.

After thinking everything over I do feel like the plan is some what extreme. Hopefully she pays me back something over the next week even if its not much, its an indication that she is willing to stick to her word and do the right thing. I just hope she is able to send me larger sums as the months go on as the sooner this debt is payed off, the faster I can look to move forward completely.

I understand how it can come across like i am getting a "fleeting sense of justice on a disabled person who has wronged you" but in my opinion her personality disorder does not give her an excuse to get out of paying back a debt she seems to be willing to follow through with. My fathers idea of small claims court was only in the event that she does not pay me anything in the next 2 months. That would add up to 5 months without me seeing a dime and I would not feel too badly about seeking that as an option if I was left with no alternative. While the money does not particularly matter too much to me over my mental health, we still have no contact so i hope it does not have too much of an effect on me in that sense. We will have to see how much she does send and maybe I will ask for more if she sends less then £100 as I cant be waiting 9 months for this to be settled.

My comment on us reconnecting is more of a fantasy at this point. Texting her the other day genuinly felt like talking to a complete stranger, her language and way she text felt so different to what i remember. Its one of those subtle things you would not realise unless you spoke 24/7 like we used to. She is posting things on social media with her and her new 'toy' and it seems to me I am still painted black. She even reblocked me after our brief interaction which felt a little unnessasary as the reason she blocked me in the first place was down to me requesting her too. As much as I know 'my girl' is inside of her somewhere, i doubt she will let herself become that version again. Plus, i dont even know if I would be able to put everything thats happened behind me without some serious groveling from her side which she has proven she will not do for me. I still think back to why we broke up from her POV but i was met with no explaination so I guess I will forever wonder what happened.

It is quite ironic you should mention this, my wife had a full blown borderline episode this past Tuesday, complete with projection of violence, full blown rage, and painted my daughter black as night, first one of this magnitude since 2022 which was directed at me at that time.  She was able to recover as I used some newly learned techniques on her, but it was still very impactful, and an ever-present reminder once a borderline, always a borderline, no matter how well it would appear she has control of her outward appearing symptoms.

Reading this almost made me feel grateful to be out of my relationship as the constant tip toe actions we have to do to keep the peace with our pwBPD seems like a cycle that is a time bomb waiting to happen, your just lucky this extreme of an episode had a 2 year delay. I hope your able to navigate your situation with couples therapy and I hope her next episode is not quite as brutal towards you or your daughter.

All the best,

Bxrrows

 

[SaltyDawg]

Bxrrows,

Thanks for sharing again.

We will have to see how much she does send and maybe I will ask for more if she sends less then £100 as I cant be waiting 9 months for this to be settled.

I guessing she owes you about 900 quid inferring that from your statement (100 quid x 9 months), that's a good chunk of money, I can see why you are so interested in getting it back.  I hope you get it back, but if you don't want to deal with crazy you may want to cut your losses and run.  Back in 2001 I cut my losses which I capped to $50k USD (today's money that would be about $84k USD or £66k) - if I were to divorce my current wife, those amounts of loss I just shared would be small fraction of what I would lose now to attorney's fees, and manipulation by her by an order of magnitude.  I am sharing those numbers to illustrate, if you loose that money, in the grand scheme of things when dealing with a disordered former lover, your losses while significant to you could have been a whole lot worse.

It is quite ironic you should mention this, my wife had a full blown borderline episode this past Tuesday, complete with projection of violence, full blown rage, and painted my daughter black as night, first one of this magnitude since 2022 which was directed at me at that time.  She was able to recover as I used some newly learned techniques on her, but it was still very impactful, and an ever-present reminder once a borderline, always a borderline, no matter how well it would appear she has control of her outward appearing symptoms.

Reading this almost made me feel grateful to be out of my relationship as the constant tip toe actions we have to do to keep the peace with our pwBPD seems like a cycle that is a time bomb waiting to happen, your just lucky this extreme of an episode had a 2 year delay. I hope your able to navigate your situation with couples therapy and I hope her next episode is not quite as brutal towards you or your daughter.

For clarification purposes the time between her violence and projected violence episodes was 13 months and 10 days.  On December 6, 2022 she punched me in the arm, and then she threw the shovel at/near my daughter on January 16, 2024.  The previous act of projected violence was in September 2022 when she smacked the crap out of a wall twice in an attempt to scare me - this is the event where I started to enact and enforce boundaries around abuse, starting with physical abuse, and gradually adding different kinds of emotional/verbal/psychological abuses to different, yet very similar boundaries around the central theme of "all abuse must stop". 

It's curious that you would use the term "time bomb", as our couple's therapist has accused me of treating my wife like a "time bomb" prior to this most recent incident and suggested that I do not treat her that way, each time she did this, I bit my tongue as I was thinking each time she said that "No sh!t Shirlock, she is a f***ing bomb that can explode at any moment" when she is triggered.  I usually did not comment on the T's assertion, as it was correct in identifying how I was treating my wife (even with a licensed therapist, I will not validate the invalid, by agreeing to not treat her like a time bomb).  I doubt I will hear those words again from the T - however, if I do, I will definitely be pushing back on her assertive suggestion based on historical behaviors which are indicative of future ones, especially as this has been a pattern going on since 2009, a decade and a half.

Most of my wife's episodes are predominately around mood swings where she is 'splitting' me, our daughter, our son, her boss, her coworkers, the coaches, her fellow volunteers painting them black (devalue), and those still happen on a daily basis, where her version of feelings based distortion of reality/facts that becomes a false narrative is still an issue, and lasts from a few hours to a couple of days, and can include "temporary paranoid thoughts or [and] severe dissociative symptoms triggered by stress".  This is the final area that I would like my wife to start working on herself; however, I am getting a lot of pushback from the couple's therapists on this, as my wife is NOT 'self-aware' of this - this will be the most difficult area for my wife to make meaningful changes without awareness, especially if I do not have support from the couple's T in this area to use the 'DBT fact checking tool' or something similar within the therapy spectrum.

Her "Inappropriately intense anger or [and] problems controlling anger" with rages has been substantially reduced from +/- daily to +/- monthly, until the past 30 days, in which she has had them almost weekly, with the most recent one being the worst with a full blown rage screaming on the top of her lungs.  My wife is self-aware of these issues, so they have dropped significantly.

I know these behaviors will come, I can manage them somewhat with firm boundaries enforced 100% of the time, using communication methods that focus on validating her feelings rather than facts when she becomes 'pre-triggered' in order to avoid detonating the 'bomb' that is my wife which necessitates walking on eggshells when in her presence.

My primary goal is to keep the violence out of the family dynamic (mostly successful), minimize the drama of her anger management issues, (mostly contained to a manageable level), and to have her reduce the amount of distorted narrative she uses to blame shift on to other people (some improvement, but still is a work in progress).  My secondary goal is to reconnect emotionally with my wife, provided that it does not interfere with the primary goal.

If you or anyone reading this has any suggestions on therapy to help persuade my wife to recognize the false narrative, it would be appreciated.

In any event, do some self-care, and take care.

SD

[Bxrrows]

I guessing she owes you about 900 quid inferring that from your statement (100 quid x 9 months), that's a good chunk of money, I can see why you are so interested in getting it back.  I hope you get it back, but if you don't want to deal with crazy you may want to cut your losses and run.  Back in 2001 I cut my losses which I capped to $50k USD (today's money that would be about $84k USD or £66k) - if I were to divorce my current wife, those amounts of loss I just shared would be small fraction of what I would lose now to attorney's fees, and manipulation by her by an order of magnitude.  I am sharing those numbers to illustrate, if you loose that money, in the grand scheme of things when dealing with a disordered former lover, your losses while significant to you could have been a whole lot worse.

I am hoping for the money to be sent back and payed off as soon as possible and hope she is able to pay it all off within the next few months. That way i can completly remove her from my life mentaly and it is the last tie we have to eachother. For me the money is more of a principle, while it would be great to have some extra money at any time. She made a point to tell me she will pay it all back so I will chase it if I do not recieve anything at the end of each month.

I think on reflection on where I am now, I was always feeling like her illness kicked in and she discarded when the going got tough. But now I have a feeling that because she is now dating the guy she worked with and would constantly tell me how disgusting he was, maybe she and him had something going on and it was her way of trying to hide it. I like to think that it was her way of coping by getting a rebound but maybe she just decided she liked him and wanted to slowly distance herself from me until i removed myself from the situation. Thoughts on this thought would be helpful.

I have started going onto some dating apps and am currently speaking with someone new who i am interested in. Shes a nice girl and has made iot clear she is into me, she has no history of mental illness and a stable career which is refreshing from my usual type and we are going out on a date soon so I will see how that goes. I somehow feel slightly guilty and nervous about the whole thing as i have not really been close with anyone other then my ex in over a year. Maybe in a way i feel like this because i have been holding on to us getting back together and if i start putting my energy into someone new so its almost like admitting that we are fully done. Its such a strange feeling because I dont even want her back anymore but am always longing for her to reach out and try and win me back. Its a very confusing feeling.

If you or anyone reading this has any suggestions on therapy to help persuade my wife to recognize the false narrative, it would be appreciated.

Im sorry to hear things have taken a downwards turn since you last mentioned what was happening in your life. Its weird the sense of responsibilty you feel when you pwBPD has an episode. You almost feel compeled to have a sixth sense about it to predict its going to happen and stop it before it does. When in reality we have to just be ready to go through the motions and do your best with damage control.

Maybe its worth trying some form of exercise that she can partake in to get this anger and energy out in a healthiier way. If she has always struggled with anger during her episodes, maybe 1 day per week she can attend a boxing gym and get that sort of negative energy out in a more positive way. I remember when my ex saw her doctor after she upped her medication dosage, they recomended gardening and yoga to help regulate her brain, but she ended up turning it down. If your wife has access to these sorts of things it could be worth looking into as it sounds like right now has been a rough few weeks.

Thanks for sharing andlove hearing your insight with my issues as well as you sharing your own.

Bxrrows

[SaltyDawg]

Bxrrows,

Thanks for responding, things are a little bit better for me since the last time we spoke.

I think on reflection on where I am now, I was always feeling like her illness kicked in and she discarded when the going got tough. But now I have a feeling that because she is now dating the guy she worked with and would constantly tell me how disgusting he was, maybe she and him had something going on and it was her way of trying to hide it. I like to think that it was her way of coping by getting a rebound but maybe she just decided she liked him and wanted to slowly distance herself from me until i removed myself from the situation. Thoughts on this thought would be helpful.

My thoughts and observations are, that when a pwBPD is stressed, they become triggered, and have an episode.  "Fear of abandonment" is the core to their being, so if the perceive abandonment from you (real or perceived), they will have another lined up to replace you (unless they have a strong moral compass, half or more don't) when you become too stressful.  Likewise, when your replacement becomes to stressful, the same will happen to your replacement, and the cycle continues.

I have started going onto some dating apps and am currently speaking with someone new who i am interested in. Shes a nice girl and has made iot clear she is into me, she has no history of mental illness and a stable career which is refreshing from my usual type and we are going out on a date soon so I will see how that goes. I somehow feel slightly guilty and nervous about the whole thing as i have not really been close with anyone other then my ex in over a year. Maybe in a way i feel like this because i have been holding on to us getting back together and if i start putting my energy into someone new so its almost like admitting that we are fully done. Its such a strange feeling because I dont even want her back anymore but am always longing for her to reach out and try and win me back. Its a very confusing feeling.

What i put in bold, tells me that you might not be ready to start dating yet.  It is good that you are thinking about this.  If you do go out on dates, don't badmouth your ex, just indicate that it didn't work out, but you wish her the best.  Girls will look at how you dumped your ex, as though you might eventually do the same to them, they don't want to be with someone whom they percieve as as $$hole.

If you or anyone reading this has any suggestions on therapy to help persuade my wife to recognize the false narrative, it would be appreciated.

Im sorry to hear things have taken a downwards turn since you last mentioned what was happening in your life. Its weird the sense of responsibilty you feel when you pwBPD has an episode. You almost feel compeled to have a sixth sense about it to predict its going to happen and stop it before it does. When in reality we have to just be ready to go through the motions and do your best with damage control.

Maybe its worth trying some form of exercise that she can partake in to get this anger and energy out in a healthiier way. If she has always struggled with anger during her episodes, maybe 1 day per week she can attend a boxing gym and get that sort of negative energy out in a more positive way. I remember when my ex saw her doctor after she upped her medication dosage, they recomended gardening and yoga to help regulate her brain, but she ended up turning it down. If your wife has access to these sorts of things it could be worth looking into as it sounds like right now has been a rough few weeks.

The downward turn was temporary, there is a silver lining, she has become more self-aware of her issues, and I think she is now self-aware of 6 symptoms (of the 9 that she has), in essence even though she is not diagnosed, nor accepts it; however, she has in effect made a self-diagnosis of BPD - something amazing and horrifying at the same time.  So, this has gotten her out of he stalled progress, and momentum and is once again moving forward, for how long and how far is anyone's guess, as I am reasonably sure there will be more lapses.

She has been exercising on a regular basis, which has been helpful overall; however, it still didn't prevent the latest episode, if anything, I think it even caught herself off guard.  The most recent episode has helped her learn to regulate her emotions better as well, and progress is being made as she has become more self-aware.

Thanks for asking and offering up suggestions.

Take care.

Sd

[Bxrrows]

My thoughts and observations are, that when a pwBPD is stressed, they become triggered, and have an episode.  "Fear of abandonment" is the core to their being, so if the perceive abandonment from you (real or perceived), they will have another lined up to replace you (unless they have a strong moral compass, half or more don't) when you become too stressful.  Likewise, when your replacement becomes to stressful, the same will happen to your replacement, and the cycle continues.

I agree with this SD, I sometimes have these thoughts like my most recent theory as I am very curious by nature and like the idea of understanding something that is clear to me time and time again that none of this illness will ever make sense not matter how I try and spin it. I do think you are exactly right and I imagine at the point she gets bored of the replacement, she will either try to recycle me or find her next victim to latch onto.

I did wait a few days before responding as I have had a few life updates. I have had a good few interviews for some jobs that I have been in the runnings for and also wanted to see if my ex would pay me this months money following me breaking no contact 2 weeks ago. When breaking no contact she was very cold and argumentative, i maintained BIFF and just asked the questions I needed answers too without reacting to her clear attempts to get a reaction out of me. She told me she would be sending me money on the 31st and earlier on today she sent £100, so 10% of what she owed which was more then i was expecting if anything at all. No messages were exchanged, I just checked my bank and the transaction went through. I think I will just remain in no contact and check my account next month to see if she pays me again. I will only reach out if the money is a very small amount as I no longer feel much of an urge to message her which is a big step considering where I was a few weeks back. Healing is not linear so I do imagine my opinion will fluxuate but I am feeling a lot better recently which i think is down to a mix of time and my medication.

Tomorrow is also my first official day that I start therapy, im looking forward to speaking with my therapist and hope that I am able to start working on rebuilding my mental health since this whole situation. The medication I have been put on is also helping me a lot. I have some side effects that do get annoying but I am not nearly as sad or feeling hopeless like I was in the past 2 months.

I think you are also correct with your comments about dating. I am not ready to move into a new relationship with someone as only the past few weeks have i truly let go of my ex. I would never bad mouth an ex to anyone I date, I have mentioned I got out of a relationship recently but have not got into the nitty gritty of the situation and do not plan too. I am casually talking to a few people but 1 does stand out which I have been getting closer with phone calls and expect us to meet up some point soon. While i still feel like i am not ready for a new relationship, I feel like dates and going with the flow suits me right now. I also do not like the idea of holding myself back from exploring new people because I almost feel like I am stopping myself from enjoying myself for my ex and I dont want her to have that sort of power over me mentally. I think the nervousness is more so the fact that I have become more insecure due to the nature of my break up and have not been in 'dating mode' for over a year so its quite daunting knowing I havent done so in a while.

The downward turn was temporary, there is a silver lining, she has become more self-aware of her issues, and I think she is now self-aware of 6 symptoms (of the 9 that she has), in essence even though she is not diagnosed, nor accepts it; however, she has in effect made a self-diagnosis of BPD - something amazing and horrifying at the same time.  So, this has gotten her out of he stalled progress, and momentum and is once again moving forward, for how long and how far is anyone's guess, as I am reasonably sure there will be more lapses.

I am glad things have been better since you last shared. My only concern would be that her being 'self aware' can be used as a form of manipulation. If she is under the impression that you think she is 'self aware' of her symptoms, it might give her a reason to adapt and come across like they are things she has under control when she is masking them from your POV. I only say this as in my own experience my ex would mask things from me in certain behaviours that she knew I was aware of. I would have to do active searching with questions to find things out that she was otherwise hiding from me, anything from behaviours to actions. Just something to keep in mind.

Look forward to catching up again soon.

Bxrrows

[SaltyDawg]

Bxrrows,

   Thank you for the follow up.

I agree with this SD, I sometimes have these thoughts like my most recent theory as I am very curious by nature and like the idea of understanding something that is clear to me time and time again that none of this illness will ever make sense not matter how I try and spin it. I do think you are exactly right and I imagine at the point she gets bored of the replacement, she will either try to recycle me or find her next victim to latch onto.

From a normal person's perspective ( neurotypical ) this will never make sense.  However, I took the time to join a FB group run by borderlines to help other borderlines, and learned how they think, behave, etc.  Once you figure this out, and 'think like a borderline', their behaviors are actually simple in comparison to a normal person, and are extremely predictable once you have figured out their behavior patterns by studying your pwBPD.  I can actually predict my wife's behavior patterns with greater accuracy than my own behaviors - the only thing I don't know is the timing of those behaviors.  It is kind of like a 3rd world train schedule, you know the train is coming, you just don't know when.

I did wait a few days before responding as I have had a few life updates. I have had a good few interviews for some jobs that I have been in the runnings for and also wanted to see if my ex would pay me this months money following me breaking no contact 2 weeks ago. When breaking no contact she was very cold and argumentative, i maintained BIFF and just asked the questions I needed answers too without reacting to her clear attempts to get a reaction out of me. She told me she would be sending me money on the 31st and earlier on today she sent £100, so 10% of what she owed which was more then i was expecting if anything at all. No messages were exchanged, I just checked my bank and the transaction went through. I think I will just remain in no contact and check my account next month to see if she pays me again.

Congratulations on the job interviews, hope you find one that you like.  With regards to getting paid back, I am very much surprised.  Borderlines in general like validation/appreciation when they do something good (in their eyes).  I would suggest sending a very simple BIFF message along the lines of "Thank you for sending the £100 today (yesterday).  I very much appreciate this.  I will look for the next payment in a month.  Thank you." - do not ask any questions, especially open ended ones, or anything to open up a line of communications beyond that.  Actually, I am pleasantly surprised that you got this money.

Tomorrow is also my first official day that I start therapy, im looking forward to speaking with my therapist and hope that I am able to start working on rebuilding my mental health since this whole situation. The medication I have been put on is also helping me a lot. I have some side effects that do get annoying but I am not nearly as sad or feeling hopeless like I was in the past 2 months.

Congratulations.  Don't expect too much on the first session, it will be like a get to know you kind of thing, finish up any paperwork, and then start to get to know you, and he will likely take a lot of notes, as you are one of many clients that (s)he has.  I am also glad that your medications are helping as well.

I think you are also correct with your comments about dating. I am not ready to move into a new relationship with someone as only the past few weeks have i truly let go of my ex. I would never bad mouth an ex to anyone I date, I have mentioned I got out of a relationship recently but have not got into the nitty gritty of the situation and do not plan too. I am casually talking to a few people but 1 does stand out which I have been getting closer with phone calls and expect us to meet up some point soon. While i still feel like i am not ready for a new relationship, I feel like dates and going with the flow suits me right now. I also do not like the idea of holding myself back from exploring new people because I almost feel like I am stopping myself from enjoying myself for my ex and I dont want her to have that sort of power over me mentally. I think the nervousness is more so the fact that I have become more insecure due to the nature of my break up and have not been in 'dating mode' for over a year so its quite daunting knowing I haven't done so in a while.

This is something you aught to discuss with your therapist.  When I see my therapist, I usually have a list, I organize it in the order of priority that I would like to discuss each item, have resources (articles, sound bytes, to back-up my feelings, and seek a better understanding explanation).  Also take notes on what (s)he says, so you can look it up, or explore it more for yourself between sessions and have better questions the following session.  With all the drama with my pwBPD, I almost never am at a loss of topics to discuss.

The downward turn was temporary, there is a silver lining, she has become more self-aware of her issues, and I think she is now self-aware of 6 symptoms (of the 9 that she has), in essence even though she is not diagnosed, nor accepts it; however, she has in effect made a self-diagnosis of BPD - something amazing and horrifying at the same time.  So, this has gotten her out of he stalled progress, and momentum and is once again moving forward, for how long and how far is anyone's guess, as I am reasonably sure there will be more lapses.

I am glad things have been better since you last shared. My only concern would be that her being 'self aware' can be used as a form of manipulation. If she is under the impression that you think she is 'self aware' of her symptoms, it might give her a reason to adapt and come across like they are things she has under control when she is masking them from your POV. I only say this as in my own experience my ex would mask things from me in certain behaviours that she knew I was aware of. I would have to do active searching with questions to find things out that she was otherwise hiding from me, anything from behaviours to actions. Just something to keep in mind.

Thank you for your concern, those thoughts have indeed crossed my mind; however, my pwBPD will not intentionally do manipulation, even though she does this instinctually on a subconscious level.  She is not under the impression that I know that she is more self-aware at this point in time, as she has recently put it on the front page of her therapy journal that was left out, and my curiosity got the better of me, so I looked after the most recent episode.  I do keep my eyes wide open, and I do listen to my gut instinctual feelings as it is almost never wrong after I verify my feelings with facts and observations.

Good luck with everything, and I hope you do much better.  As I am interested in how things progress, if you don't mind, please follow up.  Thanks.

Be sure to continue to do self care.  Take care.

SD