It's been 9 months since the relationship with the BPD ended for good. We haven't had contact for nearly 6 months.
I'm now living life after being with a Borderline.
I never thought I would be where I am now. I'm once again back to myself. Not scanning rooms, making sure that the BPD is not somewhere before entering a restaurant, store, or any other public place. No longer fearing everything.
You can take your life back after being with a borderline, and life can be better than ever.
Relationships are particularly difficult after a relationship with a Borderline. It takes time to replace bad memories with good ones, and it takes time to reprogram yourself so you aren't so fearful of everything that the BPD used to punish you for. The list could be lengthy.
Depending on the relationship, it's like reprogramming yourself after suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. When one is ready (and only when they are ready), one has to find a person who is very patient and understands that you can recover.
The good news is that you're not permanently damaged; you're only damaged permanently if you want that plight. If not, do the work and make yourself better.
I have met a wonderful woman who was patient with me. She's so wonderful and so patient. When we first started dating months ago, she saw my fear and the damage that the relationship had done to me. I couldn't go to the bathroom without the fear of accusation setting in. Now, we joke about scratches on my body.
I never thought I could joke about such things. She is a wonderful, understanding woman.
The nice thing is that there is life and healthy relationships after a relationship with a BPD. Life is better than ever. I've learned to appreciate the important things in life, ignore the unimportant, and have gained an understanding of many things that I never before fathomed.
Why Did I Get Into A Relationship With A BPD In The First Place?
I ask myself this question quite frequently. I think that it happened because I was having such shame about the marriage, and the BPD offered me the life that I always wanted. Unfortunately, the life was an illusion and not real. Once we were together, it quickly unfolded, but I was caught in the BPDs lair at this point.
The BPD's negativity caused me to overcompensate by over-committing. I over committed on every aspect, and this was my demise. I was emotionally, physically and financially over committed because of the BPDs disposition. Life was clearly not right, but I just wanted to make it right.
I now understand. I now live in a healthy relationship with no drama. We don't fight. We discuss issues that we have, and we resolve them. I may have needed the relationship with the BPD to reinforce the good in the current relationship.
Life is good, even after a relationship with a BPD. You can get out, and you can thrive. Don't forget it.
Thursday, August 7, 2008
7 comments:
Please tell me your story and how it relates to Borderline Personality Disorder. I appreciate any and all comments that you leave on this blog, and as long as they do not contain inappropriate language or are not on-topic, will publish them. Please note that I cannot respond to blogs as this is an anonymous blog. However, I will publish all appropropriate comments.
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I was with a BPD for 2 1/2 years. When I first met her I had just finished an ugly divorce. I met my BPD shortly after and she said such wonderful things to me and made me feel good. She told me she loved me about 3 weeks to a month into our relationship. She moved in with me a few months later. 10 months after we met we got engaged and we married about a year later. There were hints here and there of some strange behavior but she seemed to love me so much i guess I ignored them. She would engage me in arguments over nothing. When I refused to get involved it made her more angry. She had cuts across her chest and she told me that it was an accident. Later i realized it was self mutilation. She spent alot of money. During the time i knew her (2 1/2 years) she moved 3 times. She would always ask me why I love her. She gained weight and would binge eat.
ReplyDeleteAs soon as we got married she immediately changed into a stranger. She had problems with where we lived, my kids and my job. She would put me down and tell me i was a horrible father and that my kids were messed up. After 6 months I got tired of the complaining and said if you are not happy then move out. She took me at my word and moved out. She called me the day she moved out begging me to take her back. I told her to come back but she did not for 3 weeks. During this time she insisted we go to therapy and that she would live over an hour away. But, maintaining that she still loved me. I was not sure why I had to go to therapy but I did. During these sessions she did nothing but blame me and my kids for silly things. My therapist pulled me aside after one session and said " My dear, you marrried someone with BPD." I tried to be understanding but my wife would not commit to anything. She had OCD but stopped going to therapy ans stopped taking her medication. She would not commit to our marriage and she became tiersome to be with. She would start arguments and would not sit still.
I could not take it anymore so I asked her to pack her stuff and get out. I did this to protect me and my children. This was the best move I made but it has taken me a while to get over the guilt and the verbal and emotional beatings she gave me. All I know now is that I am free. She took up with someone else immediately after she left me. This is typical behavior. She cannot be alone.
She took up with someone else immediately after she left me. This is typical behavior. She cannot be alone.
ReplyDeleteThis statement defined every time we broke up. She always went to a past lover, it was so easy for her just a phone call to a man that she would just leave and ignore whenever she came back to me.
She once stated that she could not be alone. She once said that it was my fault that she had to go to him after we broke up (literally the next day and I wasn't even out of the shared rental we had). She certainly wasn't staying at home after this last time she broke things off.
Once she shared with a friend that she was like a trapeze artist, always having to have another person or relationship to fall into before she would let go.
I started in 2 years ago, with my BPD, it was a dream relationship, at the point we said we would go exlusive, he was covering his full attachment to me, i had a soiree with an admirer, this was the trigger of all vile evil, i could not be sure if it were a week before or a few days in,
ReplyDeleteI was made to feel that i had crippled his life, vile, evil projection
A year later, a shrink friend said i had been in a relation with a BPD, I suffered a year of bitterness, daily, inquesitions, accusations, projections, vile
I held on as i felt guilty, until at a point, i learned, most of the time, to set boundries, i also against recommendaton discosed to my BPD, that he had BPD, eventually, after rages, my broken fingers, propoerty damage, full on fights, i refused after the second time to be attacked without to strike back
I found Queer As Folk, USA, seiries 5, episodes 12 & 13, a full dramatization of my BPD's behavoiur, when he recognised, the last scene, the rage, he did acknowlage his BPD
He is now in therapy, im not in denial of the difficult path, im not Jesus, not a St not a Martar and not qualified, but i am believing my BPD has the ability, with time to get past most of it........... Lets see
Just another lesson learned
ReplyDeleteWear a scar, a bore repeating
Take a simple fateful turn
Opened up to stop the bleeding
Feeling like you never could
Been the disconnected frying
Hit the vein and struck a nerve
Seein' thru a self that's blinding
Just another brick ya toss
Stone the number one deceiver
Multiply the added cost
Easy to become a believer
Nowhere to buy in
Most of us hidin'
Others are shinin'
You know when you find it
In your darkest hour, you strike gold
A thought clicks, not the be-all end-all
Just another lesson learned ... yea
The way that I feel about the relationship that I had with a BPD can best be expressed by a something that Bob Dylan said during a radio interview about 'Blood on the Tracks': "A lot of people tell me they enjoy that album. It's hard for me to relate to that. I mean, it, you know, people enjoying that type of pain, you know?" I came to realize that she really did enjoy the pain and prefer it to the good times, and once things were going well she would go to any length to change that. I understand that she enjoyed pain and destruction, which is why I don't really miss her; I'm strong enough to understand how awful it was to be around someone like that and to make a conscious choice not to be for even one more second. I just don't relate to the desire, but that's okay. It's not my business anymore...
ReplyDeleteI'm in the process of releasing myself (hopefully) from my exgfbpd. We have been in communication recently after I attempted the no contact for about 3 weeks. It was the moment that I saw her appear on facebook that made everything go bad for me again. I started to feel sick with jealousy and started the inevitable contact.
ReplyDeleteI guess that was her aim, she knew that it would hurt me deeply as we always discussed in our 3 year relationship that we never use facebook. To make things worse she activated her account on my birthday. Hid her friends and basically took off into her new life.
I am completely in bits, I can't help myself checking her page..worrying about what happened to our beautiful love and now pretty suddenly shes like on the move.. I am seeing a doctor and he has advised counselling as a priority for me. I have a similar tale to tell from all the things I have read on the site. It's so familiar it, helps a lot.
One thing that particularly bothers me is that she had a son from a previous relationship and although I never hurt the daughter in any way. My exgfbpd said to me in an email I shouldn't have read that the son said that if ever saw me again(the son would 'kill me'...Of course everything in the relationship I was at fault for..
even though the son is a teenager, the mother my exe seemed to delight in telling me this. some kind of projected threat on my life.. I feel so shellshocked and tbh worried..that there is a person out there that wishes me dead..
The mother (myexe) used to find ways to tell me things that really didnt ever need to be said, but I was always in pain after she said them. Talking about her exes, about maybe one day meeting them in the future and that I probably wouldn't care about it in the future. And this said to me only a few weeks after I proposed to her. My love was never good enough and this was 'enforced' so many times and in so many ways. My self esteem crashed and basically failed.
I could go on an on. I even fear that she may find this blog message and somehow turn this against me. The crazy thing is I truly believe I love this woman. There were points that I thought that I would die for her love. She never returned any love that I showed. Even when parted I would send a couple of messages about missing her and nothing.. only to discover that she'd been out all night. I guess you all know the story..
I've never posted on a blog before but reading some of the tales here has helped me understand that I'm not alone. I have have been through all of what I have read here.
What effects me now is the projected threats that she finds easy and delightful to throw my way weeks after I managed to get away. I feel that there is no end to this..
Being told that someone would kill me is not something that you want to hear, but she dresses it in a context of an angry child who saw the relationship destroy itself. And my god we had some battles...I feel for her son but at the same time she has now instilled fear into me. It never ends.. And the most messed up thing of all is that I want to meet her next week for lunch..
Anyway, any advice would be great
I was in a relationship with a borderline guy for 5 months. At the beginning he was nice, very attentive, always around, very charming, so charming that I chose to ignore his manipulative nature, constant lies, he just lied about everything!!! He declared his love only after 2 month, he even wanted to marry me, in the bed he was intense but he was unable to show his feelings trough sex. After some ugly fights I tried to broke up with him, several times, but it seemed just impossible. Last time we met, he raped me. It was like in that absurd crime movies, when the victim begs the killer not to hurt her, but he is just heartless. This is how I felt, just fighting, begging, crying, but what I realized that this man just has no heart, he doesn t feel love, sympathy, respect, sorry, pain, nothing. Now I am having therapy and I am recovering, I am just sorry I chose not to listen to my first impulse when I met this guy, when my first impressions about him it was that he is crazy. So putting together my first and last impressions about him, I guess I finally learned my lesson and in the future I will listen to my impressions no matter what. I hope others in similar situation will do the same. If you have the slightest impression that something is wrong with your partner, just run, don t stay to help, don t stay and expect miracles, they are sick and they will just hurt you.
ReplyDelete