A disturbing memory I suppressed came to light - not sure what to make of it.

[How to communicate after a contentious divorce...]

Hi everyone,

Firstly I want to say thank you for sharing your stories, it's really humbling watching you take care of one another and gently guiding eachother - and myself - through really turbulent and painful relationship endings. I've been toying with the idea of posting, worried about whether or not it would make rumination over my breakup worse, but I remembered something somewhat disturbing yesterday and I'm just going to bite the bullet. I was in a relationship last year with someone for around 6 months. No BPD diagnosis, and it's only something I considered as an explanation after this all exploded months later, till this day i'm still not sure if he is, but I strongly suspect something isn't right. Describing the history of the relationship would take super long and probably be not great for me at this point. I suppose I wanted some input over something I remembered last night that I hadn't thought of since it happened.

We've been broken up for more than a year now, but his anger and blaming language toward me has really kept me stuck and triggers me - I suspect there's also a part of me that is still trauma bonded. Particularly because he went to prison for a few months last year for an activist protest, so a lot of his accusations are steeped in self-righteous language. I broke up with him in a really emotional moment after he was telling me loved me one day and wanted me to meet his parents and then in the same day would say his feelings were setback due to very banal comments I made that made him feel insecure. Obviously in hindsight it was the correct decision. We had some back and forth and he blocked me, telling me he would unblock me after his court case. He ended up going to prison and his friend reached out to me 10 days later telling me that the boundaries he has set are still in place. It was really bizarre as I had no way of contacting me, nor any desire to at that point. I was worried about him though. Two months later I get another message from a friend saying that he wanted to email me from prison. He gave the details and we started exchanging really pleasant letters. I thought maybe we could reconcile at that point. But after the fourth letter he didn't respond for a week. I got extremely anxious and then sent a letter saying I needed to stand back and process things and that all the blocking stuff had hurt me. I felt guilty about expressing that last bit in hindsight, but honestly at that point I didn't think he was bothered about the connection. He wrote back to me furiously, saying I had burned bridges and that he can only assume I didn't want to salvage any friendship, and that you don't cut communication with someone in prison, he asked me not to contact him again. I felt guilty about causing him pain, but ultimately I know it was the right thing, and I wouldn't have sent that if I didn't already know he had a huge support network of 40+ close friends supporting him and that he would be out in two months.

His anger really got in my head, despite how much it made me doubt my continued safety in the relationship. The memory I wanted to share was the following:

A suppressed memory came back out of nowhere - in bed, i said something about spitting during a conversation and he spat at me mid convo - like on my face - apparently because he mistakenly assumed i asked him to, and then apologised. But in hindsight his apology wasn’t grovelling as i know mine would be if i did the same. in fact i think if a partner asked me to spit on them i would be extremely reticent and not want to and i dont think i actually could, ever. i made a joke immediately telling him nobody can ever know he did that to me. and he said why haha, ok. in my good nature i always assumed the best towards him but i find it strange that i completely forgot about that until yesterday when i was really upset and missing him. i think my mind was trying to tell me something - that this is a very disturbed person.
i dont feel traumatised or anything even though i know it’s extremely bad, particularly because it wasnt even mid sex, which makes it more disturbing.

I'm not sure what I'm asking for here by sharing this memory, possibly a space to write it down, that's all. I'm just tired of the rumination, but at least I'm grateful that this memory came back to me, as I think it flies in the face of his perceptions of the relationship, which I've given too much credence to for so long.

[beanenthusiast]

Hi everyone,

Firstly I want to say thank you for sharing your stories, it's really humbling watching you take care of one another and gently guiding eachother - and myself - through really turbulent and painful relationship endings. I've been toying with the idea of posting, worried about whether or not it would make rumination over my breakup worse, but I remembered something somewhat disturbing yesterday and I'm just going to bite the bullet. I was in a relationship last year with someone for around 6 months. No BPD diagnosis, and it's only something I considered as an explanation after this all exploded months later, till this day i'm still not sure if he is, but I strongly suspect something isn't right. Describing the history of the relationship would take super long and probably be not great for me at this point. I suppose I wanted some input over something I remembered last night that I hadn't thought of since it happened.

We've been broken up for more than a year now, but his anger and blaming language toward me has really kept me stuck and triggers me - I suspect there's also a part of me that is still trauma bonded. Particularly because he went to prison for a few months last year for an activist protest, so a lot of his accusations are steeped in self-righteous language. I broke up with him in a really emotional moment after he was telling me loved me one day and wanted me to meet his parents and then in the same day would say his feelings were setback due to very banal comments I made that made him feel insecure. Obviously in hindsight it was the correct decision. We had some back and forth and he blocked me, telling me he would unblock me after his court case. He ended up going to prison and his friend reached out to me 10 days later telling me that the boundaries he has set are still in place. It was really bizarre as I had no way of contacting me, nor any desire to at that point. I was worried about him though. Two months later I get another message from a friend saying that he wanted to email me from prison. He gave the details and we started exchanging really pleasant letters. I thought maybe we could reconcile at that point. But after the fourth letter he didn't respond for a week. I got extremely anxious and then sent a letter saying I needed to stand back and process things and that all the blocking stuff had hurt me. I felt guilty about expressing that last bit in hindsight, but honestly at that point I didn't think he was bothered about the connection. He wrote back to me furiously, saying I had burned bridges and that he can only assume I didn't want to salvage any friendship, and that you don't cut communication with someone in prison, he asked me not to contact him again. I felt guilty about causing him pain, but ultimately I know it was the right thing, and I wouldn't have sent that if I didn't already know he had a huge support network of 40+ close friends supporting him and that he would be out in two months.

His anger really got in my head, despite how much it made me doubt my continued safety in the relationship. The memory I wanted to share was the following:

A suppressed memory came back out of nowhere - in bed, i said something about spitting during a conversation and he spat at me mid convo - like on my face - apparently because he mistakenly assumed i asked him to, and then apologised. But in hindsight his apology wasn’t grovelling as i know mine would be if i did the same. in fact i think if a partner asked me to spit on them i would be extremely reticent and not want to and i dont think i actually could, ever. i made a joke immediately telling him nobody can ever know he did that to me. and he said why haha, ok. in my good nature i always assumed the best towards him but i find it strange that i completely forgot about that until yesterday when i was really upset and missing him. i think my mind was trying to tell me something - that this is a very disturbed person.
i dont feel traumatised or anything even though i know it’s extremely bad, particularly because it wasnt even mid sex, which makes it more disturbing.

I'm not sure what I'm asking for here by sharing this memory, possibly a space to write it down, that's all. I'm just tired of the rumination, but at least I'm grateful that this memory came back to me, as I think it flies in the face of his perceptions of the relationship, which I've given too much credence to for so long.

[ThanksForPlaying]

I've found that as the smoke clears and you're able to step away from the relationship... you'll start finding a lot more of these partially repressed (or willfully ignored) red flags.

When viewed through a BPD lens, knowing what you know now, a LOT of things that previously seemed strange may begin falling into place.