Discarded after 7 years out of the blue

[Dwelling7]

Hi all,

Never thought I would end up posting on a message board like this. But after all the insight and comfort I got while reading, I felt the urge to share my story. To gain some clarity, insight or maybe just to get it of my chest. Or maybe because journaling for myself feels weird and mostly gets stuck in sad ramblings.

Got dumped after a 7 year relationship five weeks ago out of nowhere. Completely devastated. No idea what to do with myself. I get hardly any sleep, can barely eat and have no control over my thoughts. The unwanted train-of-happy-memories keeps raging through my head at insane speeds. I am in therapy and got Oxazepam prescribed but I am a bit scared to lean on meds as I have never needed any before. But a lot of days / nights it just get’s too much and I really need something to take the edge off.

So, here goes the full story. Might be a bit long and all over the place but I’ll do my best to keep make it as clear as possible. 

Ex-GF (33) was diagnosed with Borderline last year. She was struggling with bad moods (I didn’t think of it as depression back then) a lot but was very much able to hide this from me for the most part. Only a few months ago she confessed to self-mutilating from time to time. I had a hard time coping with this, since I had no idea.

She went into group therapy but skipped a lot of sessions and most she said about it was that’s it “annoying”.  In this phase I, in my ignorance, completely underestimated BPD.

I didn’t think much of it.

Just another medical label.

“Don’t get hung up on it” is what I actually said to her.

For the most part she was high-functioning. Gave up a office job to pursue painting as a career a few years ago. Got along well with family and friends. Our relationship had minor ups and downs but overall it was steady and for the first time in my life (I’m 37 now btw) I felt like I found the person I was gonna grow old with. We shared everything and we’re really good together. There was no aggression, no cheating and rarely ever any reckless behaviour (compared to some of the stories on here that I’ve read over the past few weeks).

Last year had been quite rough, with my dad dying and me getting panic attacks for the first time (before the break-up, so unrelated so far). But during all this time I felt we had a solid foundation of love and care for each other.

In the 2 months leading up to our break-up she had serious sleeping problems which resulted in mood swings and a dark cloud over her head. I tried helping out, but now release that coming up with solutions was not what she needed or would even accept.

So, 5 weeks ago she was sitting at our kitchen table, eating breakfast and I randomly asked “you okay?”. All of the sudden she exploded, confused but ice-cold.

“I don’t know what I want anymore, I don’t know who I am, I need my freedom, this relationship is holding me back in life, I want out.”

I was in a complete state of shock. I didn’t see ANY of this coming. In this moment she said that for those 2 sleepless months, all she had been thinking about was our relationship (which she later retracted, but I’ll get back to that).

During this conversation I only later noticed she started throwing stuff at me to get me angry. For example”

“I get worried thinking about a life in which I only ever have sex with you.”
(I didn’t get angry, this felt like a very reasonable feeling to have after a 7 year relationship.)

She went to her parents for a week “to take a break”, leaving me in our house. During this week, I decided to really reflect and look inward to what I had been doing in our relationship. In this week I wasn’t thinking about her BPD at all, it just felt like “real” feelings. I realised a lot of things that I did wrong, I can be very resolute and focused on fixing things practically. I wrote her a long letter, with insights in my faults. After this week of, what I thought was a break, she came back to talk. I didn’t recognise the person sitting across from me at all. Ice-cold, no emotions:

“A break? I thought I made it clear, we broke up. I need my freedom. You restrain my freedom. I wanna be free to go out with my friends, to have sex with people, to feel alive, I wanna live on my own.”

Once again, I was in shock. I read her my letter, owning up to my shortcomings and mistakes, in the hope of creating a new starting point to rebuild our relationship. Her letter was something completely different… It was as if she had build up a court case against me. I was the worst person ever. My sense of self took the worst beating it ever had to endure.

Let’s first get to the part that messed me up the most. When I asked why she hadn’t give me any signs of relationship-doubts, her response was: “I can’t talk with you, you always get angry right away”. I believed this for a while. I could get angry. I felt 100% guilty of taking away her voice.

Later on I realised this was a very mean-spirited way of laying the blame on me. I also realised that most of the times during our relationship that I did get angry, it was because she wasn’t capable of dealing with any criticism at all and I wouldn’t be heard if I asked her in a normal voice. Multiple times I had started crying after yelling, because I felt hopeless and left with no other choice.

Guess this could be called “gaslighting”?

The main take away of her letter was still “I need my freedom / you take my freedom away”. This also made me doubt myself in major ways, because if anything, freedom is one of my main life principles. Still no emotions whatsoever during this conversation, she was even looking at her phone and iPad every now and then, while I was shaking and crying uncontrollably. Then the crazy stuff started happening. When asked about some examples of me taking away her freedom, this came up:

“You always want the subtitles off while watching a movie and the sound real loud.” (Yes, this was actually the first argument, it would be funny if it wasn’t so confusing)
“If I watch a series in bed, you want me to turn the brightness of my iPad down.”
“I just need a man who can paints walls and help me with Ikea furniture.”
“I hate the way you talk to your mom.” (Extremely hurtful, since she knows I have a complicated relationship with my mom)
“We had a fight on day three on that mountain.” (When asked about our month long trip to Japan last year, which was absolutely magical. The only thing she remembered was that fight, of which I have no recollection at all.)
“My friends never liked you and say I should have dumped you years ago.”
“I just cant imagine you being a dad.” (At the start of the relationship she was very vocal about wanting a baby, I was holding back then but started coming around the last year. Very hurtful.)
“I can’t deal with your mental problems anymore.”
“We never really talk about anything.” (Absolute BS)
“You control me financially.” (Absolute BS, I only pay for her when we go to fancy restaurants, because that’s something I like and she doesn’t really. Sidenote: she still has a credit card from her dad, who pays a lot of her bills but if I pointed this out anytime in the last few years I was told to “mind my own business”. Guess the dad mirroring thing goes a long way.)

This list kept going on and on, going from tiny details about fights from years ago, to major stabs right in the middle of my weaknesses.

I was, once more, in absolute shock. And the worst part: I believed everything she said. I hated myself and felt like a monster. I obviously messed everything up and was the worst person ever.

When I left she still showed no emotion whatsoever. The last thing she said to me: “Why aren’t you getting mad?”. There was even a slight grin on her face while she asked this. It crept me out. All I could do was cry and shake.

Later on I realised she wanted an angry reaction out of me, to confirm her court case.

A few day after conversation #1 was the moment I started reading about “splitting”. And I couldn’t believe how this was exactly what was happening here. She made me the devil.

Another week went by of utter desperation, confusion and pain. She decided to stay in our house, leaving me with no place to go, hopping from friend couch to friend couch. After a few days, on a Friday, I asked if we could please talk once more. I needed some clarity in this madness. Her response?

“Sure, next week on Tuesday, I have a lot of work that I need to do first and I’m going to see some friends this weekend and blabla.”

Guess what? Shellshock once more. How could she throw away 7 years in one ice-cold conversation? How could she have other priorities while my life was slipping through my fingers?

I decided to write a letter to read to her again, mostly because I felt if we made it a normal talk she would get angry and run over me right away.

This time the letter was different. The take-away was still that I wanted our relationship to work, but I clearly pointed out how she devastated me with her remarks and jabs. I didn’t mention BPD or any specific terms like splitting, but I did word it in subtle ways that she was painting me black all the way.

So after a few excruciating days of waiting, conversation #2 came around.

She came in with the same ice-cold-no-emotion stare as the first time around. I started reading my letter and halfway through the up to this point unimaginable happened: she broke down and started crying. It felt like I pierced through her selfmade armour. She confessed to feeling utterly confused, not sure of who she was, what she wanted in life etc. I held her in my arms and tried comforting her. It pained me so much to see the person I love the most go through a complete existential crisis. After my reading of all the hurtful things she said to me, she (kind of) apologised. When asked if she really had been thinking about our relationship during all of her time laying awake the past 2 months she answered, kind of confused: “No? Did I say that?”.

The conversation ended in a way that I didn’t hope for: she still felt that the bottomline was that she needed freedom, that was the only feeling she could “trust”.

A day later she texted me: “I feel so confused after our talk yesterday. I don’t know what’s real anymore, I don’t know what I feel or want. Am I crazy? Is this BPD? Do I really want this? This is so complicated.”

As you can imagine, this gave me the exact hope I was looking for. “OFFCOURSE IT’S YOUR BORDERLINE, YOU LOVE ME” is what I wanted to yell. But I didn’t. I decided to give her all the space and time and freedom she needed to clear her mind. So after a few days, in which I was constantly looking at my phone for the “WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING!?” text from her, she told me she was going to visit her friend in New York (we live in the Netherlands) for a week. After her trip to NY she said she wanted to talk again. Sure, fine, take your time. I decided to go NC. Which was HARD. But, with all the talk about freedom and me taking it away, I felt that was the right thing to do. I was still in a very, very dark place all the time, but in the back of my mind I was also still convinced that she would see the light while away from me (imagine my panic when I came across the “out of sight, out of mind” posts on here).

After 10 days of NC I couldn’t take it anymore. I sent her a lighthearted and semi-I-miss-you message. After three days I got an ice cold response. When I asked when she would be back from New York, she told me she wouldn’t be back for another week. This was the moment my limit had been reached. She was staying 10 days longer then she initially told me. Leaving me completely hanging. The hope thing was driving me nuts. So yesterday I decided to call her and got the return of the ice-cold version of her.

“Hope?! How did I ever give you any hope? I broke up with you!”

She had no idea that her texting me all the things about her confusion, gave me hope. Which boggles my mind.

So. Yeah. I guess I needed the band-aid to be ripped off, but damn, it hurts so bad.

7 years of being together, thrown away in 2 hours of talking. No heads up, no small hints, no long talks about feelings, no possible solutions, no time to prepare. Just the most impulsive cutting it off at the core.

One detail that I keep coming back to is a thing someone in therapy had said to her: “You only speak when you’ve completely made up your mind”. That’s exactly how this feels: she made her case against me, I’m restraining all of her freedom, so goodbye.

I politely asked her to remove her stuff asap from our house (I already rented the house before our relationship, she came to live in with me, so I’m keeping the house). Seeing all her stuff is driving me insane. And a bit of anger came in when I realised she just left to go on a vacation for two weeks, without thinking about how she left me for even a minute.

And, yeah, being completely honest, I still hope that when she gets back and steps foot in our house once again, the epiphany moment will come at last. But I shouldn’t allow myself to count on it. She has been running away from the consequences of her actions for all of these 5 weeks (first in working day and night, then in running off to New York, all the while skipping therapy) and I can’t imagine there not being a moment where reality hits her like a brick in the face.

It feels weird and unfair to put all of this on her BPD. If she really wants complete freedom, then who am I to argue?

But thinking back on our relationship and taking in account all the things I read about BPD these past few weeks, I’m starting to see clear patterns. Friends would be the best person one day and completely neglected the next. There was always a sense of her not knowing who she is. What she wanted. There was a continuous quest for a self. The grass was ALWAYS greener on the other side. There was a lot of insecurity about being in social situations. There was no way to give her constructive criticism, because it never landed and was met with strong resistance. The relationship with her dad was extremely complicated and could not be talked about.

And now I’m left here, sleeping on friend’s couches because being in our house and looking at her stuff gives me the worst anxiety I ever had in my life. I don’t know what to do. I can’t imagine living in that house again. I can’t imagine being all alone. The future feels like a big black hole of darkness and loneliness.

I read enough to (sort of) know better, but I really want her back.

[jaded7]

Hi all,

Never thought I would end up posting on a message board like this. But after all the insight and comfort I got while reading, I felt the urge to share my story. To gain some clarity, insight or maybe just to get it of my chest. Or maybe because journaling for myself feels weird and mostly gets stuck in sad ramblings.

Got dumped after a 7 year relationship five weeks ago out of nowhere. Completely devastated. No idea what to do with myself. I get hardly any sleep, can barely eat and have no control over my thoughts. The unwanted train-of-happy-memories keeps raging through my head at insane speeds. I am in therapy and got Oxazepam prescribed but I am a bit scared to lean on meds as I have never needed any before. But a lot of days / nights it just get’s too much and I really need something to take the edge off.

People here will recognize the confusion and pain you have Dwelling. And confusion. So much confusion.

I just want to note that I got an anti anxiety drug when my relationship exploded in a barrage of put downs and belittling and yelling. Just over. Done. It was really helpful in getting me some sleep, which I hadn't gotten in nearly two months at that point.

But just be careful with them, this class of drugs is really addictive.

[Cluster Beeline]

You’re in the very early stages of a process most of us have been through and I feel deep empathy for you. I want to redirect your attention away from the present and towards the future twist and turns you will face. The decisions you make today can powerfully impact the trajectory of your recovery. Just like a physical injury, you can get most things right and in time heal. Or you can do what most of us have done and do everything wrong and extend your pain indefinitely.

Relationships, like people, can die suddenly or linger for years in their deathbeds. If you reflect on things, your sudden breakup is in the long run better than her toying with you with years of false hopes and torture. It does you no good to demand anything other than: “it’s over.”
In fact, most BPD discards involve cheating and a new partner at the point of breakup. Your girlfriend seems more sexually restrained than most pwBPD.

Since both were suffering during the final months--you with anxiety attacks and she with insomnia—perhaps your subconsciouses where aware of problems that your conscious minds were avoiding? pwBPD have serious problems with partners who show any sort of health issues. They cannot be caretakers. Your panic attacks may have triggered the breakup.

Strategically what you want from her is “yes” or “no” and to avoid like the plague “maybe.” Her initial black and white attitude served you well. The real damage begins once she starts giving you hope.

Having BPD means she is mentally ill and not responsible for her actions. Therefore, you should not expect any “standard of care” from her. Given her low self-esteem, she will relish seeing your writhing in pain as she rejects you. She is now playing the part of her tormenting parents while it is you who are relegated to her former role of being abandoned.

To break this alignment, you can mirror her narrative and embrace independence—and then live it. You must understand and fear what is coming down the road: a new man. She will flaunt him to you if you are still in her orbit. This is extremely painful and something you want to avoid at all costs. You should thank your lucky stars that you have this option—most of us didn't since the new man is normally already there at the point of breaking up.

Although contemporary ideology attempts to condemn them, there are stereotypical sexual roles that human nature prefers. In a typical relationship, the general overall vibe is the woman striving for commitment while the man prefers independence. This dynamic has now been reversed in your case.

By exerting your independence, you gain two things. One you will create the emotional space to heal from your anxiety. Second you will reattract her, which is obviously dangerous.
There is a paradox with BPD women: when you act strong and do things correctly, you reattract them which is great emotionally but is exactly what you don’t want to do on a rational level. By acting weak and pathetic, you disgust and push them away, which hurts but is ultimately in your interests as it releases you from their drama.

In my experience, BPD’s recycle for sex in order to punish their last partners. By having sex with their exes, they are in some strange way negating their last relationship. Once that mission is accomplished, they tend to fade away.

And so the trajectory you are facing is a very painful period where she starts a new relationship. To avoid this pain you need to be as far away as possible even before this relationship starts. Ignorance is bliss. If this new relationship breaks down, she will come crawling back to you for revenge sex to punish her last suitor. If you have been able to emotionally separate from her, and profoundly understand the temporary nature of the new hook-up, then this might be okay. The best though is to break all contact with her and reject her when she comes back. This is easier said than done.

The correct trajectory for healing is as far away from her as possible. And as you yourself intuit, BPD or not, when a partner demands independence, the only correct move is to grant it. And I admire your attitude towards the meds, in extreme cases fine, but healing without them is best.