Living The Life of a Free Man

I've been spending quite a bit of time traveling, working quite hard, spending a lot of time in my career. I've also been spending quite a bit of time playing and practicing guitar, listening to quite a bit of music, time with the family, time working out, time reading, and time doing a number of things.

I realized something. I'm a free man. I'm completely free. I've broken the chains.

You don't know what I'm talking about unless you've been in a dysfunctional relationship, particularly with a borderline. You live a life where you're weighed down.

Weights Will Eventually Break You
It's true. The weights of a borderline will eventually break you, one way or another. I used to think that I was superhuman in terms of my will, my work ethic, my attitude...I wanted to be Father of the Year, Husband of the Year, Boyfriend of the Year, Worker of the Year. I was so driven, so hungry, so...energetic.

Then I met the borderline and started dating her. She took my energy and channeled it. She channeled it primarily to her, because of her needs, she could not be comfortable with my energy. Her paranoid mind thought that my energies would channel towards other women, other interests than her.

Slowly but surely, my energies mellowed, probably as a result of growth, as well as a result of being in the relationship. When I was in the relationship with the borderline, my energies were aimed at her. However, the weight of walking on eggshells on a constant basis, not knowing when she would snap, weighs on you.

I told her that I would have had a heart attack if I stayed with her. Stress related illnesses are just that, stress related. These relationships cause major stress on you. I used to smoke when I was with her, a habit I had given up before meeting her.

The borderline will eventually kill you, one way or another.

Want Freedom? Shed The Weights

You can give the borderline boundaries, but you need to be able to enforce the boundaries. You need to get to a point that when the borderline in your life acts out, you can react with indifference.

This is the only way to shed the weights of the borderline grasp. We Nons know that we live life with a cloud over our heads, always waiting for the borderline to snap, to get upset about something that we don't understand.

How To Be Free From A Dysfunctional Relationship

The only way to truly free yourself from the weights of a dysfunctional relationship is to leave it. You actually need to leave the relationship.

If you have a borderline partner that is willing to go to counseling and therapy as well as medication, this may be a solution. You also need counseling to better understand boundaries, a better separation of responsibility, and the like.

It's difficult, but you can free yourself from the dysfunction. The key to this is awareness. Awareness of the situation, of the behaviors, and all of the associated dysfunction that goes along with a relationship with a borderline personality disordered person. More on awareness in upcoming posts.

How To Bring Closure To a BPD Relationship

I was reading through contributor David's post. David, thank you for contributing -- please continue contributing as long as you feel the need. Your posts will always be welcome here.

For those of you that are feeling the pain that David feels and wishes to contribute, drop me a line at mybpdrecovery@blogspot.com

One thing that David indicated in his last post was that you will never get closure from the relationship.


I disagree. You can get closure. It will take time, and you may not be ready for it.

Closure is Forgiveness
To truly get closure in the relationship, you must forgive the BPD for what they did. That's right, you have to forgive the person that treated you horribly, that said mean things about you, may have cheated on you, shows little conscience, etc.

You must forgive the BPD for what they did to you. Depending on where you are, it may seem counterintuitive and impossible.

Give yourself time. Over time, you will feel all of the emotions that I outline below, and you may eventually forgive.

How to Forgive The BPD
The problem with dysfunctional relationships like BPD relationships is that to properly heal from the relationship, you need to have no contact. Remember, the Non is addicted to the BPD and having contact with them feeds your addiction. Look for a post with regards to the No Contact Rule in the upcoming days.

Before you can forgive the BPD, you must feel the appropriate emotions of grieving a loss. These are not in the formal order, and in fact, you may go back and forth and back into stages. You will go through many of these phases as you work through the loss of a BPD, so get ready and allow yourself to experience the feeling.

Let yourself feel the following emotions. Don't try to hide them or stuff them away. If you do, they'll come out in unhealthy ways. Furthermore, don't try to hide them in a bottle of alcohol, excessive work or the like. Let yourself fully mourn the relationship and you'll get through it.

Denial
The first stage of the grieving process is that you'll deny that the relationship truly is over. Borderlines are good at keeping their Non partners in this phase for years on end. They break up with them, go out and start dating others, then miss their Non partners, bringing them back into the fold. They'll do this time and time again for months, if not years.

What happens to the Non is that they grow so accustomed to this that they actually convince themselves that the BPD will be coming back, like David thinks. This is why the No Contact rule is so critical so the Non can fully heal from the relationship.

Pain
When getting through the relationship and feeling the need to bring closure, the Non will feel much pain. The reality that the relationship is over is difficult to accept, but when you do accept it, you feel enormous remorse.

If you're like me, you felt that this was it; this person was the one that you put everything into, the person that you compromised so much to be with, you accepted so much, and they still rejected you. You feel so lost, like you'll never get back to yourself again and never find a relationship like that again.

The reality is that you probably won't get back to that person again -- you're going to grow and become a better person than the one that you were. You probably won't find a relationship like that again, if you learn about what it was in you that accepted such as dysfunctional relationship. In the end, if you do the work, you'll actually have much healthier, functional relationships in the future.

Anger
You're going to feel quite a bit of anger, and you need to get it out. Anyone that was with a true borderline has quite a bit of anger that they have to deal with. Being someone that treats you so poorly stirs up quite a bit of anger.

Let yourself displace the anger in a healthy way. Close your doors, lock yourself in your home, go to a canyon and let your exBPD have it. Scream like she was there -- make sure that she's not really there, because you're then violating the No Contact rule which is critical to bringing closure.

You need to feel the anger. You need to get through it. Without getting through it, it will come out in unhealthy ways. You'll seem irritable, you may take some of your anger out on others, and the like. Overall, not something that you want to do to others that you love.

Depression
Through this process, you're going to become depressed and sad. you're going to miss your exBPD and wonder how you're going to get through this life without them. How will I survive? What am I going to do with myself now that they're gone?

Depression while grieving the loss of a loved one, even a BPD who broke your heart, is inevitable, normal and acceptable. It's strange because this person treated you so poorly at times, but it's okay, you can allow yourself to be depressed.

Be sure not to allow yourself to be depressed for too long. Eventually, the days should start to be better. They should improve. If they don't, see a professional for evaluation and treatment.

Fear
While healing and recovering, you'll have quite a bit of fear that will go through your mind. I've lost my soul mate -- how will I ever find someone like them again? I never had such a great lover, friend, etc.


You'll feel fear all around you. I would argue that fear drives much, if not all, of the reasons that we were in the relationship with the borderline in the first place. We were afraid that we were never going to get what we wanted in a person. We wanted that person that was exactly what we wanted, and the borderline gave us exactly what we wanted on a silver platter. We're so blind to the reality that this person isn't real that we overlook their emotional stability, their raging, their psychosis, and all the other fun things that make them a borderline.

Through the process, particularly in the beginning, we'll notice how much fear we have of life without the borderline. We eventually learn that life without the borderline is better because:

• we're not responsible for another person anymore
• we don't have to live our lives walking on eggshells anymore, afraid of the next time that the borderline is going to freak out on us for we don't know why
• we can find someone that truly loves us for who we are, not the void that we temporarily feel
• we can find someone that treats us well and truly loves us

Internal Reconciliation

As we get through the healing process, we begin to understand what happened, why we were in the relationship, the voids that the borderline filled and the like. To be sure that we don't repeat history, we have to learn these things or we will enter relationships with other borderlines and repeat they dysfunctional patterns.

Internal reconciliation takes quite a long time and will actually go in cycles. We may initially reconcile the relationship and what happened, but have many pieces that are still unreconciled. This is normal and acceptable.

There are some parts of my relationship that I continue to struggle with to this day. I've never seen the BPD in person since we broke up, and I'm not sure what I would do if I were to run into her. I don't know how I would act. I think that I would avoid the situation at all costs because there would be no good outcome. In the end, I wouldn't feel better about anything, so it would be best to avoid any interaction.

What I've realized about the BPD that I was with is that she and many other BPDs are limited in their capacities. They are not capable of the caring and level of loving that others are, and they are immature in their love. As such, they will never have the relationship at the level that I expect a relationship. One that contains high levels of trust and understanding of the others' needs and desires.

Acceptance
We eventually accept that the relationship is over, accept the loss, grow in ways that we can, and move on. This may take years for some people, which is acceptable.

Allow yourself the time that you need to get through the process. This takes time; one must go through the phases that I've described above, or they will not be able to fully heal.

In the end, remember that your BPD ex is limited; you should actually feel bad for them. You don't ever need to tell them this, but feel bad for them nonetheless. They live a life of constant turmoil, drama and misery.

One more thing that helps with this process is prayer. Pray to help with accepting the loss. Pray to help get through the feelings of anger, depression, and other emotions. Pray to help forgive your exBPD for the things that they did to you.

Forgiveness
It may take some time to get through all the phases of healing from a loss and actually feel the capability to forgive. When you are able to forgive, you've truly grown, you've become a better person, you'll feel better about yourself. You've healed from the BPD relationship and you're ready to do other things in life. Congratulate yourself-- you've taken a large step in your personal development. You now have brought closure to the relationship.

You can bring closure to a BPD relationship. It's not easy, and you may not be able to easily see yourself getting there. By following these steps, praying, and giving yourself time, you can get there.

Even though these emotions are difficult, us men feel like we should stuff these emotions. Don't do it. Let yourself feel them fully. I was fortunate enough to be on the stop smoking drug Chantix which allowed me to be fully emotional when going through the breakup. Be sure that you can allow yourself to get through the emotions, or they'll come out in unhealthy ways later in life.