Why are we stuck?
Hi All.
I know EXACTLY all of the thought processes you are all going through. I had all this happen to me 13 years ago and went back for another dose this year(doh!) after being text/phone/email friends with my exBPD for the last 12 years while i was busy being married. I didn't know what BPD was back then but certainly do now.
I have posted my full story in another thread so i won't bore you with the details but my feelings are exactly as yours are and 7 weeks after our split i am still on the same emotional rollercoaster that you are on too. One day i seem to have it worked out and feel like i am moving forwards, the next i can wake up and be in turmoil again. It's not like a normal relationship breakdown whatsoever and at 51 i have been on both ends of the 'ending it' process. Normally whichever way it happens in a 'normal' relationship, you have a level of closure and sometimes a full closure. You still grieve but it gets better each day and you feel like you progress all the time.
When exiting a BPD relationship it is entirely different isn't it? Why the hell is that?
My best guess as to why that is, for what it's worth is as follows:-
We get into the relationship. We are idealised, mirrored and we suddenly feel that we have the most perfect partner, the one we have dreamt about all our lives. They make us laugh, they make us feel so damn good about ourselves and we feel so alive. You grin inanely a lot of the time when you think about them just because you are so happy and everything in life is so sweet! Something about them seems so innocent maybe even naive and maybe even childlike at this point and your protective instincts are fired.
You now have a person in your life that you idolise.
Then, as soon as you fully reciprocate the feelings offered to you they retreat to the Twilight Zone. The reasons for this are much better documented elsewhere (uniform triggers like emotional/sexual/physical abuse in childhood etc).
They retreat, we are confused and advance. We see this prompts them to retreat even further so we retreat ourselves, only to find they then advance. Jeez it's all the wrong way around isn't it? We start excusing them for things we would NEVER excuse a 'normal' partner for. Our boundaries are pushed back and eliminated completely in some cases. Why? Because they are in arrested development and they need reparenting, you become the parent as well as the lover at this point because they are in a childlike state and this is part of their appeal. You move into the realms of unconditional love as you would with your own child to excuse them (hell, mothers will even protect a murdering son in extreme cases). They get away with it and pile it on even more. You redraw your boundary lines and they just break them down again in a tantrum. You end up confused and bewildered and more and more drained by the day.
You are now a surrogate parent in addition to being a lover.
It's not like you don't know how a 'normal' relationship works is it. You know that there are a certain amount of things that you do in a 'normal' relationship that are part of the usual dance of courtship. The dance can be beautiful and co-ordinated and is nearly always rewarding and you grow together more all the time.
The BPD dance is ugly and unwieldy, a mass of tangled limbs and it looks to me that it ALWAYS ends up in a mess with you both on the floor.
You pick yourself up and try to dance the right way with them again and again, but while you try to stay co-ordinated, they dance nicely for awhile just to pull you back to them, they, like a child, just start doing windmill impressions or flailing around wildly and fall over again.
Eventually they may even dance the most beautiful dance, right at the end, only to STOP just like that, leaving you on your own.
The double whammy in my eyes is that you not only lose what you though was the love of your life, you also lose one of your children in the process of the split. Is that what makes us keep wanting to go back for more? Is that why, even in the face of the most dreadful behaviour we STILL want to help them? Normally(and i have done myself) you would run a mile and not look back if anyone else treated you like that! BPD's are different, they have you both ways emotionally. One as the idolised lover and the other as the defenceless child that you are programmed to protect. You lose both!!!
You end up with the internal conflict whereby your own defence mechanisms tell you to RUN RUN RUN but your inate beliefs and your human qualities tell you to PROTECT PROTECT PROTECT. That's why it hurts more than any other relationship breakdown EVER.
Thats just my angle on it and feel free to dissect and dispute it.
Merry Christmas all and remember it's not you!!!!!
