"I will never leave you..."

[A_New_Earth]

I'll stop hijacking this thread now...but this below is good advice. I wasted far too long analysing everything about my ex. A close friend ended up saying: "You're not with her anymore, but you spend more time talking and thinking about her than when you guys were together..."

 

My friend was right. Come a 'reasonable' conclusion on your ex's issues and then turn the focus onto yourself and how to avoid this in the future.

 

Peace.

 

 

 

Yes, but hindsight is a wonderful thing..

 

[]

 

<snip>

 

I know from experience that demonising and "diagnosing" the ex can be somewhat helpful initially as it can take the heat off, but it can easily become an obsession, a diversion from the distress, hurt, anger and general upset.

Ultimately you need to start looking inwards to make doubly sure it never happens again, else you will be prone to making the same mistakes, as you will no doubt be drawn to all that "drama" again.

People often say "Never again" to find themselves attracted to the very same types...

Edited October 25, 2017 by a LoveShack.org Moderator
Edit and truncate quote to topical material responded to

[GemmaUK]

I am very much not in favour of diagnosing people OP.

 

However, I have read all your posts and it's incredibly similar to an ex lodger of mine who was diagnosed but refused medication.

 

I was a home witness to all of the relationships she had in the 1.5-2 years she lived here.

Plus, there was a huge impact on me.

Not only was any relationship a total trauma (the wailing you mentioned was almost constant when she was seeing someone) but anxiety was right up there along with it.

She would wail in her room day and night - literally.

Se complained she could never sleep and to stop more issues I just stopped doing anything other than being silent in my own house to keep some kind of equilibrium.

Sometimes she could be fine, seemingly happy - we were good friends even - then whoa!! Not so much!!!

 

She often wanted to go off out with me - as a housemate/friend but it always ended in disaster. She was unable to stay at a table for a few minutes whilst I went to the toilet so we always lost a table or I had to escort her to the toilet/bar - then once the table/seats were lost we had to leave (her rules) and head home.

 

Her birthday day out - she suggested something she was happy with and asked me, I agreed to go - I couldn't take it anymore by the end.

We got a train to London to where she wanted to go and she knew the way to the location - we walked 3 hours getting there and we could have got a tube straight there.

At the end of the day and after a heck of a lot more hours walking I spotted a tube station - the station which would have saved us three hours and she refused to go home that way, she had a tantrum and burst into tears, called me names and insisted we walk back via roads for the three hours again. It was 6pm and I had had enough by this time.

I gave her her ticket (she gave hers to me as I had to look after it - it was her birthday so not up to her apparently) , told her the way we were going via the tube, showed her it all on the map and that it would take 15 minutes to get back to the main overground station and said 'follow me or go your own way, I am not walking when there is a tube to take me straight there'.

She followed, was silent and clearly angry at me the entire journey but we got home fine within 2 hours.

 

She was 43, me 45.

 

When she left - she moved out within a day, tried to keep my front door key - I stopped her from doing that - I physically had to stop her though - I barricaded the door with my body and arms.

 

When I cleared her room out there was what looked like a glacier of scrunched up white tissues which she had thrown under her bed - thousands of them!!!

 

You got out fairly safe - don't look back OP.

[Highndry]

I don't really care what she has or doesn't have at this point, I've just been trying to make sense of what I just went through. It's been refreshing to meet people like Downtown and others who have helped me understand things.

 

I've got nobody but myself to blame for what I've been through, I chose it.

 

I've used this site as an outlet to vent, and it's been very helpful. I appreciate the responses, even those with that tinge of omnipotence.

[GemmaUK]

Understanding it a little bit or at least realising others have experienced similar is a long way towards getting over it.

 

I chose my situ too.

I should have evicted my lodger - I didn't because most of all I felt sorry for her.

My bad - she turned right on me in the final couple of months - way moreso than just with the keys incident!

 

I am now just glad she is gone.

Still a problem though as a lot of her mail still comes here several years later. I have no forwarding address so it's all return to sender. Not much else I can do about that.

[Downtown]

HignNDry, below I respond to statements you made in this thread and on Oct 13 in Trust's thread, where our paths first crossed.

 

I am extremely confused by some of these behaviors in women.

If you actually dated a BPDer for a year, consider yourself lucky that you only feel "extremely confused." Of the 157 mental disorders listed in the APA's diagnostic manual, BPD is the one most notorious -- by far -- for making a large share of the abused partners feel like they may be losing their minds. To a lesser extent, narcissists also have this "crazymaking" effect on their partners.

 

With BPDers, this confusion largely arises because they sincerely believe the outrageous accusations coming out of their mouths. And a week later, when she is now claiming the exact opposite, she likely is convinced that is true too. The nonBPD partners therefore are left thinking that they must have done something wrong to cause their spouses to be so upset. With narcissists, this confusion arises from their skill at manipulation.

 

I've just been trying to make sense of what I just went through.

I applaud the intellectual courage you show in trying to understand what happened in your failed relationship. If she is a BPDer, this means you essentially were in a parent/child relationship with her. Because you believed she truly loved you, you likely assumed that many of the outrageous allegations coming out of her mouth were true. If you were like me, you mistakenly believed that if you could somehow figure out what YOU were doing wrong, you could return her to being that wonderful woman you saw at the beginning.

 

The result of your walking on eggshells to avoid triggering her anger is that you started changing your own behavior, thus losing touch with the "old you." Trying to please her, you may have been excessive in your care giving and overly empathetic, thus lowering your personal boundaries. The result is that, if you dated a BPDer for an extended period, you likely became so enmeshed with her personality that you started having difficulty telling where YOUR problems stop and HERS begin. If she is a BPDer, there is a good chance that this unhealthy enmeshment is a primary source of the "extreme confusion" you speak about.

 

If so, the usual advice to "Focus only on healing yourself" may not be very helpful for a while. It will take some time for you to regain your true sense of "yourself" -- so you know what "self" to be working on. In my experience (and that of hundreds of others leaving a BPDer relationship) what helped the most in speeding up that process was to acquire a basic understanding of how a BPDer usually undermines the relationship. Once you're able to see her contribution to the toxicity, you can -- by subtraction -- more easily see the mistakes you are responsible for. Then you're in a great position to start working on yourself.

 

I'd like to thank "Downtown" for sharing that list of 18 traits of BPD. I am not one to want to try to diagnose somebody who may have a mental illness, but that list is a real eye opener for me.

For the purpose of choosing a compatible mate, it is important to be able to spot strong warning signs of BPD. It does not really matter, however, whether your GF has the full-blown disorder (i.e., meets 100% of the diagnostic criteria for "having BPD"). That criteria is set at such a high threshold that it primarily serves only the interests of the courts (who don't want to institutionalize people) and insurance companies (who don't want to pay for treatment).

 

Some people confuse "spotting symptoms" with "making a diagnosis" even though there is a world of difference between the two. They don't realize that the psychiatric community WANTS them to learn how to spot these behavioral symptoms -- i.e., the warning signs associated with each disorder. This is why hundreds of mental health institutions describe these behavioral symptoms on their public websites.

 

Hence, if anyone tries to dissuade you from discussing BPD/NPD traits by claiming that you're trying to diagnose your exGF and are wasting your time, please do not be misled. That is the equivalent of advising you not to learn the warning signs for a heart attack or stroke because you're not trained to diagnose them. It is like advising a woman that she is foolish to be reading about breast cancer warning signs because she cannot diagnose it.

 

I don't really care what she has or doesn't have at this point.

BPD and NPD are not something -- like chickenpox -- that a person either "has" or "doesn't have." Instead, they are spectrum disorders, which means every adult on the planet occasionally exhibits all BPD and NPD traits to some degree (albeit at a low level if the person is healthy). At issue, then, is not whether your exGF "has" BPD and NPD traits. Of course she does. We all do.

 

Rather, at issue is whether she exhibits those traits at a strong and persistent level (i.e., is on the upper third of the BPD/NPD spectrum). Not having met her, I cannot answer that question. I nonetheless believe you can spot any strong warning signs that are present if you take a little time to learn which behaviors are on the list. They are easy to spot because there is nothing subtle about behaviors such as always being "The Victim," verbal abuse, cold withdrawal, and temper tantrums.

 

My ex displays almost every [bPD] characteristic with the exception of maybe two.

As I said, these warning signs are easy to spot when they are strong. Of course, learning to spot these warning signs will not enable you to diagnose your GF's issues. Although strong BPD symptoms are easy to spot, only a professional can determine whether they are so severe as to constitute full-blown BPD. Yet, like learning warning signs for a stroke or heart attack, learning those for BPD may help you avoid a very painful situation -- e.g., avoid taking her back and avoid running into the arms of another woman who is just like her.

 

It's been refreshing to meet people like Downtown and others who have helped me understand things.

Thanks for the kind words, HighNDry. By learning to spot BPD warning signs, we learn far more than how to avoid marrying a BPDer. We also learn how to better understand our own dysfunctional behaviors at various points in our lives. At different life stages, we all exhibit behavior that sometimes is on the upper third of the BPD spectrum.

 

During early childhood, for example, we all behave like BPDers 24/7. And when the hormones surge during the early teens, many of us start behaving like BPDers all over again. Indeed, any hormone change can cause intense feelings, resulting in the same thought distortions. This is why, at various points in our lives (e.g., puberty, pregnancy, postpartum, perimenopause, menopause, menstruation, and times of great stress), we all can start temporarily behaving like BPDers again and again.

 

Unfortunately, many folks are unaware of the power of this BPD information to cast a bright light on our own occasional behaviors. They mistakenly think that BPD traits are only useful for diagnosing whether a person has full-blown lifetime BPD.

 

I've got nobody but myself to blame for what I've been through, I chose it.

HighNDry, you are wise to realize you were a part of the problem. It takes two willing participants to make a toxic relationship last very long. The toxicity, then, is not something SHE was doing to you. Rather, it is something you BOTH were doing to each other. Of course, her contributions (e.g., the rapid mood flips and temper tantrums) are easy to see. Your own contribution, however, is far more difficult to see because -- after all -- you feel you were only trying to help her.

 

Yet, your willingness to remain in a toxic relationship indicates that you may be an excessive caregiver just like me. If so, our problem is not wanting to help a loved one but, rather, our willingness to keep doing it even when it is to our great detriment to do so -- and even when we are not really helping. As I understand it, we keep repeating that behavior -- as I did for 15 years -- because our desire to be needed (for what we can do) far exceeds our desire to be loved (for the men we already are).

[Highndry]

Thank you, Downtown. We lived together for the better part of two years, not a year. It has taken a toll, I must admit. But I will emerge a better person, I hope. I am an "excessive caregiver" as you say, and I don't want that role anymore. I want a woman who loves me and is interested in me and my well-being for a change, something this relationship completely lacked.

Edited October 22, 2017 by Highndry
spelling

[Been]

You want a woman who does for you what yo do for her.

Its really that simple.