Share some advice/stories re: recovering from a breakup with BPD ex?
September 23, 2015 10:01 AM   Subscribe

So, I'm back again with relationship woes. I ended things with my intense, volatile boyfriend about two weeks ago. I'm on day nine of no-contact and this is probably the longest we've gone without talking. I'm feeling pretty certain about purging him from my life; I've blocked all avenues of contact and managed to get him to agree to 30 days of no-contact. I did this by suggesting that there may be some hope of reconciliation at the end of the 30 days, which I feel was an act of bad faith on my part, but I don't think I would have gotten him to agree to it otherwise.

I've been in therapy for the last couple of months. The relationship was making me rather stressed/depressed/crazy, so I decided it was time to get back on the Couch. It's given me a clearer perspective on things, and it eventually gave me the courage to break up for good. My therapist mentioned that my ex could have BPD (borderline personality disorder); he then explained concepts like 'splitting', black and white thinking, fears of abandonment. I'd noticed these things, but I'd never labelled them or attributed them to BPD, out of ignorance.

After doing just the littlest bit of research, all these light bulbs started flickering on. The drama of the relationship that once seemed so murky and chaotic and formless started taking on some sort of shape, something I could hold onto. The whole BPD thing explained most of his behaviours that had previously confounded me, and it's been helpful knowing that many people have shared this experience, from both sides. It's chilling how much of what I've read describes my ex to a tee. But in a way, knowing all this makes me feel worse. I feel like he's less of a person to me now, now that I can label him. I feel so sad that he probably didn't really mean all those things he said to me about never having felt this way about a girl before, and how I was the only person he ever saw a future with (I realise this is just ego injury, but still, ouch). My therapist even suggested "he says these things to all his girlfriends". Basically, the common advice to people in a relationship with a BPD individual is "you can't reason with this person", "they don't really love you, they just take love from you", "get out while you can" and "don't try to fix them".

I realise this sadness is tied up in my feelings for him and the freshness of the break-up. I care about him a lot. And yeah, I'm still holding onto the awesome times we had together. It wasn't all bad, obviously, otherwise I wouldn't have stayed with him for over a year.

There were moments of self-awareness where he did admit that his behaviour was destructive, and he did take steps towards finding better coping skills and developing healthier habits. But it was all too little too late for me. I believe there's a monumental task ahead of him and his therapist if ever commits to overcoming his demons.

I'm just really confused, because on one hand, I feel more certain about staying out of this relationship for good (pretty much everyone in my life has advised me to), but on the other hand I feel like the person I was with, whom I connect with on such an intimate level, is actually someone completely different - someone I'll never understand, and someone who'll never understand me. To think that his experience of the relationship was so painful, so much more intense than mine, to think that all he ever wanted was to be loved, yet he couldn't help self-sabotaging and pushing me away - it just makes me sad. I feel hopeless. I wish I could have made him happy. And I wish he could have made me happy, because I really do think we were a good match (besides the obvious).

I guess I'm in the grieving stage of this. Whatever ideal I kept afloat is now dead. It's time to move on but I'm having a hard time letting go. I've cried my eyes out, suffered sleepless nights. This break-up has been a long time coming, and I prepared myself for it a while before it happened. I have supportive friends, a good job, interesting hobbies, a solid mental health-care plan. Everything else in my life is fine and I know I'll feel better eventually, but this break-up has been harder than any other, even ones where my boyfriend dumped me for another girl, or admitted they didn't love me. I'm not angry - I can't even make myself angry at him; he never hit me or said anything remarkably bad, so there are no singular events I can point to and say 'he did x, y, z, and crossed these clearly demarcated lines'; it's just one big blur of arguments, paranoia and obsession, leaving me feeling incredibly drained and like I want to close myself off from the world. I don't even feel that hurt or like my self-esteem has taken a hit, because he never said or did anything to 'cut me down', per se. It's so hard explaining this to people who haven't experienced it before, because it happened so subtly, over an extended period of time. And here I am wondering how I ended up like this, unable to articulate how I'm feeling, mentally torturing myself.

It's more palatable to think that this tumultuous relationship was a special, unique thing - that its path was the result of our two complex souls trying to find a way to coexist. It seems so cold and disinterested to think "he has this personality disorder!" and "I'm attracted to him because of low self esteem!" and "we both had childhood wounds that never healed and we trauma bonded!". Again, this is just ego stuff, the compulsion to be the tragic hero in the narrative that is your life.

It sucks being told that you can't have a sustainable relationship with someone you love. That the thing that keeps you from being happy together is totally out of your control, even though you both want to stay together to make it work. If someone wrote us out a plan to follow, with even just a 40% chance of things working out, I'd give it another go in a heartbeat.

Anyway, I feel somewhat better after having written this. Thanks for reading my rant, Metafilter. Please share your experiences, as I'd curious to hear what other people have gone through.
posted by sweetshine to Human Relations

This post was deleted for the following reason: Heya, sorry you're dealing with this, but as written this is mostly just "here's how I'm feeling" without any clear concrete question that'd make it make sense for Ask MetaFilter. -- cortex

 
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