Therapeutic post

[sw2020]

I'm generally the person with all the answers. But my most relationship has totally confused me. I'm left questioning a lot about a lot. Including myself.

 

I'm 28 and have a lot going for me in life. I'd been in a 4 year relationship prior to meeting current gf. I'd checked out if it 6 months prior to breakup.

 

I met my now ex gf 6 months after that relationship. I felt totally sorted, and she was seemingly everything i was looking for. Beautiful, funny, smart, a bit ditzy, very active and liked being outdoors with a bit of partying too. The sex was insane.

 

Everything moved so quickly. I'm not even sure how. But we were in a relationship in a month.

 

I could now list out so many warning signs that i saw, but stupidly thought would go away or improve. Lack of trust at times, switching between love and strong dislike quickly. She started taking a new pill and things were pretty crazy until I persuaded her to stop.

 

When she got cold or something spooked her (could be literally anything) she'd say she can't have a relationship and say it was over. Normally lasted a few hours to a max a couple days.

 

I'm not sure why, but in my head, I thought "if I can help her overcome her Trust issues with men, I will have an awesome girl".

 

That was the single biggest mistake I have ever made with a woman. It got to the stage where I was being trustworthy, but being told I wasn't. Trying to persuade someone that you are genuinely who you are, and it being impossible to do so, is a sure fire way to slowly strip your confidence. If they want to convince themselves that you're bad, they will do it. Never fight it.

 

I'm a determined sob and find it very hard to give up on something. So a bit of trouble in a relationship didn't really worry me or make me want to run away.

 

I have my own business and it was beginning to suffer as a lot of my energy was being taken by her.

 

Things were slowly improving, or I though they were. Then she worked away for a whole summer. I genuinely couldn't handle her crazy whilst she was away. It was too hard. She'd got my barriers entirely down at this point (I hadn't realised quite how vulnerable I was to her) and then the time apart became so hard. She didn't trust me at all and being ld for 6 weeks was pure hell. She will never see how she picked me apart, but she did. I see it now. I was strong for about 2 weeks of it. But then she flipped out at me and I just couldn't handle it. We broke up and made up and fell out constantly throughout the next month. She'd seen me weak.

 

We patched things up when she got back. But my confidence was not good. But rather than allow me to sort my confidence out, she seemed to have assumed power. And was wielding it an a very unproductive way.

 

I said I needed space from her. I was trying to free myself from the negativity. She has absolutely zero empathy at times. As though she doesn't understand the most basic things. Her age range for dealing with things seemed to be between 4 and 17 and then flip back to her age of 26. She'd never apologise for a lot of the nasty things she'd say. Her reasoning was "that's how I felt at the time." not wondering why she could be so different so quickly.

 

So anyway, we agreed a week of not speaking would be good to try and get our heads together. She didn't last a day. Then day two she did the same. I was so annoyed and asked her to leave. She took this terribly and blamed me for rejecting her when she was trying to make things better. All I could think was "if you were like this all the time, we wouldn't need space.".

 

So we talked like adults, which was rare. Decided that she hates me going off and leaving her to do other stuff. I said what I needed from her. She said she can do that.

 

Few weeks later, I said I needed to get away for a weekend. She was pissed and said we should do the week break then. I said okay. I was only going to see family.

 

So on the Sunday she says we don't need space and that we're over. I said okay. Couldn't be arsed arguing with her.

 

Few weeks go by. I was simply exhausted by it all. Got a lot of my strength back in the time apart. We agreed a time to get her stuff from the flat. Said I wouldn't be there and asked she leave her key. Day she was there she said she really wanted to see me. So i went. I felt confident and sorted.

 

We went for a walk. Caught up. Had a kiss and a cuddle. Stupidly. I said goodbye. She left. I knew she was doubting her decision. And messaged me later saying she felt she was making the biggest mistake of her life. I told her she was. I felt it was a mistake too.

 

So we end up meeting the next day, chatting and she says how much she loves me etc. She's learned her mistakes etc.

 

We make up, have sex. Everything great again for a while. Time goes by and she gets pregnant. I know the time. Says she took a morning after pill and I believe she did.

 

We deal with it all well. She's very mature in how she acted etc. She didn't want the baby, I said I'd support her decision but that it didn't feel right having an abortion to me.

 

Day after the abortion she breaks up with me. Haven't spoken to her in nearly two weeks. Abortion was a month ago. She says she's totally fine and doesn't want contact from me and the breakup is due to me and not letting her in to my life and not making her feel special enough. No joke.

 

I knew what I was getting myself in to and the risks involved, but it still took me apart. I'm okay now, NC nearly two weeks. But broken up 1 month.

 

Missing her like crazy some days though. Even though I'm no moron, if she came and asked for my help now (and who knows with her) it would take a lot for me to say no.

 

Bizarrely i feel guilty as though I've let her down.

[Downtown]

Pretty sure my ex has bpd. [Your 12/28 post.]

SW, I agree that the behaviors you describe -- inability to trust, temper tantrums, rapid flips between adoring and devaluing you, low self esteem, vindictiveness, and black-white thinking -- are classic traits of BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder). What amazes me, however, is that you know enough about BPD to be able to spot these warning signs and put a name to them. If you don't mind my asking, how did you finally realize that your were seeing the red flags for BPD?

My desire for her is insane too. It's totally illogical, but I can't turn it off.

You don't have to turn it off. It will fade over time, on its own. Indeed, your healing process has already begun. All you have to do is manage to STAY AWAY FROM HER and remain NC. Toward that end, hold on to all the righteous anger you have toward her. Use that anger as a crutch to help you walk away and stay away. A year or two later -- when you are safely away -- you can kick aside that crutch.

I'm left questioning a lot about a lot. Including myself.

Good. You should be questioning your own motivations so you better understand yourself. Otherwise, you will be at great risk of leaving that woman only to run into the arms of another just like her. IMO, you almost certainly are an excessive caregiver just like me. Our problem is not that we want to help people but, rather, that we keep doing so even when it is to our great detriment.

 

The reason, as I understand it, is that our desire to be needed (for what we can do) far exceeds our desire to be loved (for the men we already are). We therefore have great difficulty distinguishing between the two, oftentimes believing we are loved when the person only needs us. And, when a woman really does love us, we have difficulty realizing it unless that woman also desperately needs us.

 

The result is that we walk right on past all the emotionally available women (BORING!) until we find one who desperately needs us, which is evident because she is projecting much vulnerability ("catnip" to us excessive caregivers). We can spot these women across a crowded room. We are attracted to women like Marilyn Monroe and Princess Diana, who were so good at projecting vulnerability that they could make it leap off a movie or TV screen. Not surprisingly, both of them had full-blown BPD if their biographers are correct.

 

To avoid repeating our mistakes, we have to learn how "to settle" for the normal courtship period that one gets with an emotionally available woman. This means we have to be willing to forgo all the fireworks, adulation, and intensely passionate sex that is so characteristic of a BPDer relationship from the get go. Normal relationships are not that intense coming out of the starting gate. Simply stated, then, we have to give up our role of being the knight on the white horse who rides in to save the damsel in distress.

Then she worked away for a whole summer. ...She didn't trust me at all and being ld for 6 weeks was pure hell.

If your exGF has strong BPD traits, it will be especially hard for her to deal with separations and LD relationships. When we are babies, we have to learn that mother does not vanish and cease to exist when she is out of our sight. After we learn that lesson, we have to learn that she will return even when she's been gone for what seems like a long time. And, as we get older still, we have to learn that we are still an important part of other peoples' lives even while they are away or out of town. And we have to learn that a person's personality is normally quite constant from day to day and week to week.

 

Significantly, all of these acquired concepts are a part of what is called perceiving "object constancy." I mention this because a BPDer (a person with strong BPD traits) is so emotionally unstable that she never got very far in learning how to perceive object constancy. This, then, is the primary reason that a BPDer oftentimes will behave like a total stranger when her partner is out of town. This, at least, is my understanding of it.

We make up, have sex. Everything great again for a while.

Your many cycles of breakup and reconciliation are very typical of BPDer relationships. A recent survey at BPDfamily, for example, found that a third of such relationships had six or more full cycles of breakup and reconciliation before finally ending -- and a quarter of those relationships had ten or more complete cycles before eventually ending.

[lostsoul4286]

This was quite my situation. I'm 27 and my performance was not up to par at my firm, if you're career oriented, these kind of women are not for us. They forget that we have a career and responsibilities and all they think about is "ME". I still feel guilty as well. Hang in there, downtown nailed it. All I wanted was to be there for my ex and her response would be "I'm not use to people helping me out" but in hindsight she was letting other people help her. Sometimes we're left in such a vulnerable state that we settle as well instead of going for something that actually has an emotional/intellectual connection. Whatever the case may be, remember the old saying "What starts fast, ends fast".

 

We gotta hang in there.

[lostsoul4286]

Once again, Downtown nailed it as well, until now I noticed this isn't the first girl I go for with severe traits of BPD... It wasn't until I started self reflecting after my meditations that I noticed I settled for them and tried to make things work because of the amount of affection and love they overwhelmly give in the beginning.