Should I ask my BPD ex to give me closure?

Hello to all, and thank you, sincerely, in advance. My BPD ex was someone I loved very dearly for 6 years, and I empathized with all she went through; if you go through the same, I thank you doubly for helping me.
OK: I'm a mid 40s man who was in a committed love with a BBD girlfriend for 6 years, with numerous ridiculous splits the first 3 years, then after a breakup, a more settled 3 years. She was 29 when we met, me 41. We've been permanently broken up for just over a year now, and she's recently been engaged to the guy she set up while holding on to me, to ease the transition. They have been together for a year. Funny, they're both counselors! My education was also in psych, so me and my ex had countless, heartfelt discussions on improving ourselves and the relationship.
We were both intensely attracted to one another, and both hoped it would be for life. She just never settled enough to make that possible. When she left the relationship, she just drifted. She never said we were over. She dated a couple of men casually (no intimacy) but did not tell me until later. She hooked up with this old friend, and started seeing him, while still hanging on to me. It wasn't a rebound, but a hand-off. So it was all very civil, tears, phone calls about the conflict of leaving me, the need to move forward, but no closure, no face to face, no apologies, no real adult explanations, hugs, cries, no real, quality honesty and closure. It took an intense toll on both of us. She lost 25 lbs, and so did I. (We were both very fit, so we're talking scary skinny. Neither of us ever put the weight back on...strange). That, and life situations tore her up, I know. Almost killed me!
She almost begged me not to have contact with her so she could let go & move on. I definitely was good about it.It was at my expense, to die on the vine. Only wrote a few letters, which made her get a bit hysterical and then remorseful, but told me contact must cease.
I let go and was a private wreck for a year. Hell. So confusing. So much love, so much subtle but cruel use and abuse. Toward the end of the year, I asked if she needed help in an email. She sternly but not cruelly replied she didn't want any contact. I replied that I was actually in dire straits and needed a friend who loved me, to help me just get on my feet. Not pathetic; being responsible, because the Wellbutrin I was on had me suicidal as hell. I reached out to do the right thing. Suicide would have been really cruel. She never replied. Finally, we saw each other out (with her man). She could barely say "hello," and put on her familiar veneer of cool and collected, to protect herself.
Now, at 14 months out, I'm well over the idea of romantic love with her, but I NEED a sense of loving closure. We went through so much to fight for our relationship, and I endured years of harangues, yelling, fits, coldness, distance, her intense pulling me in, the back and forth. I never raised my voice, was never unkind, but gentle, caring. She often, graciously told me how much she appreciated me for everything. She just rarely had the courage to act consistently , and return much of that sort of selfless love. It tore her up, too. She's high-functioning, to say the least. She has morals. She's a crusader of sorts, big into justice & right. Just with me, she was a maladjusted two-year old a lot. To the world, she's mostly a beloved, overachiever. I know she loved me very much. I know she burned out on the whole process, feeling she had spent me, and just had to move on. She got better, but never lost that sense of possible abandonment, and pulled the plug first.
Now, after a year alone, and now in a new love relationship with a woman who is as warm and strongly compassionate as can be (like me), I am still hung up. I am conflicted with anger, hurt, confusion, (a strange jealously) that my ex took away her love, and gets to be happy now, while miss the love of my life.
I want so badly to write my ex, and ask very nicely but directly for her to come to me in person, end this silence, apologise, help me mend the wounds, square the whole relationship, it's meaning, and it's ending, give me my full due, and actually SHOW me that love she said she'd always have for me, in the days after she left me. I need to heal, and she really does have the power to do that. All psychobabble aside; when an abuser comes to the used/abused/loved one, and says "I'm truly sorry," I did really love you, you are not crazy...it can heal, I believe. Now that she'll be getting married, it could be an excuse to sweep it all further under the rug, but ANYTHING was always an excuse why she just had to hold me in reserve, then be left alone to move forward on her schedule. I want to make this heartfelt plea, so I can move on, love & be loved.
Suggestions? insights? I am very grateful!
Thanks!

Hi,

That sounds like a really rough experience-for both you and your ex.

I'm wondering whether you're suffering from depression-you've mentioned a number of symptoms such as weight loss (I'm guessing down to loss of appetite), suicidal ideation etc. You mentioned that you were on Wellbutrin-are you on a different anti-depressant now? Or seeking therapy etc?

I think the feelings you're experiencing right now like anger etc are normal and natural. However, I think it would be a mistake to act on them. I know you have an impulse to contact your ex for closure however I think it would be a bad idea. Your ex already specified that she doesn't want to be contacted so you have your answer to your question right there. The feelings of anger etc will eventually pass. I think you could be throwing away the chance of happiness with your new partner who sounds great so the phrase "when God closes a door, he opens a window" is flashing in my mind right about now.

2B, man that all sounds really painful and difficult. Mine wasn't nearly as long as yours, but I am in the same type of situation, looking for closure. I've come to the conclusion that there is a good possibility that there may never be any, and unfortunately I am afraid you may have to as well. You didn't say whether you were seeing anyone for therapy, that may be a place for you to start. I think you need to understand though, as much as you may have loved this person and thought you understood her, she needed to get away from you, but they don't ride off into the sunset with their partner, its the same old thing they are inflicting on their new romantic companion. Get healthy, find someone to confide in, exercise, workout, find a new hobby, love your new partner with all your heart, I know its difficult-but you have to use baby steps. I'm getting better myself by the day with no contact, I think you will too once you decide to do it. Feel free to PM me, God bless.

There are no easy answers. It depends on what you want. I will outline what happened in my experience, I can't say that your ex will act the same or that you will get "closure" that you might get from another relationship. Sorry for the length but I think the context is necessary for my advice.

She sent an e-mail basically saying no contact. I sent a few desperate e-mails and in one I mentioned how I felt used, and she basically wrote a scathing and inaccurate interpretation of the past blaming me for everything. At that point I attempted to understand her point of view, and wrote the most emotional thing I ever have. My brain was basically imploding and rewiring itself (one night my heart was racing essentially the entire night period while I paced back in forth trying to understand and replaying all sorts of conversations and events from the past). She wrote back and completely inverted the facts, and she said that she found someone new (I tried to explain that I didn't want to be romantically involved, I just wanted to talk and be her friend) and attached a glibe song about breaking up and moving on. I called her, she coldly answered and simply went on the attack and I could hear the pleasure in her voice as I was stumbling and trembling in the conversation trying to understand why she was trying to increase my pain. I then had to resist driving over to her house (thank god I was able to resist) and my entire being felt like it was being destroyed. Dark days.

This triggered severe depression (runs in my family, I had been descending lower and lower during the period of time when she kept on what I would call an "on-call" position) where I stopped shaving, showering every few days, wearing only pajamas, while I went to college (I was able to get okay grades, but only because I took less challenging classes and didn't work). I couldn't sleep. I woke up in pain and attempted to suppress the memories and move on, but I couldn't, I would ruminate for days on end about everything. I was in so much pain that at one point I actually violated my moral rules by saying how I really felt in a single line in an e-mail (basically that I would have preferred to have been physically destroyed rather than emotionally). She was very angry about this (that was literally the only time I ever said a word that was in anger, because I had a deep intuition that she wasn't intentionally hurting me).

Steps towards closure

First step: A year later, she tried call me. I didn't answer because I had literally been suffering on an unimaginable scale for an entire year. She sent me a text saying that I was right and that she was sorry. I ignored it because she had simply violated my concept of morality so thoroughly and in such an unimaginable way that I had to stay with no contact. Around six months later I called her and she apologized profusely. But overall, I left the experience empty, she didn't have any explanation for her actions and she didn't let me express how much she hurt me. I actually was consoling her by the end of it. It was the first step, because I needed to know that she knew that I existed (because I wanted to know if all my hours of caring about her meant anything to her).

Second step: She went to a place where she knew that I might be there. When I heard her laugh from behind me, I froze in terror and looked at something until I was sure she wasn't there. It was traumatic and triggered fears and memories. But this made me want to try and process some of the feelings again (resisting them is really unhealthy but feeling them is so hard). A few months later (after working on it a lot) I sent her an extremely long e-mail trying to explain my perspective from beginning to end, in detail. I never used that e-mail again, because just sending it was what I needed, so I didn't look if she replied. I knew that not interacting was the healthy thing for me.

Third step: I finally got back into my life, my depression finally went into a bit of a remission for over a year. My brain had changed substantially at that point, but I was coping. And I actually wanted to see her face to face, because I was running away from my trauma. I simply wanted to have a nice reasonable discussion with her and have a few hugs, so I sent her an e-mail. Very soon afterwards she called me in a crisis, and I drove over to save her (unconsciously, I didn't know about the BPD). She apologized with palpable pain and I gave her some nice hugs and told her that she wasn't a bad person. After about an hour, she asked me to come home with her... she pleaded desperately for me to come home with her. I said that I couldn't do that.

Fourth step: So she started calling me every once in a while, and she talked about her life, her co-workers, her new crazy boyfriend... and she also just talked about random things and I enjoyed the interaction. I then occasionally went to see her, and we would go around town drinking and she was being kind but she would usually over-share about her problems and I would give her hugs (the stories about her new relationship were eerily similar to her old stories). But overall, she was kind to me, and she was still fun to talk to about random things. It was actually a fairly healthy interaction overall, I would see her every few months. But over time I started to feel like she still didn't know me.

Fifth step: I then got drunk one night and unintentionally I brought up the past. We both cried and hugged a lot. I realized that I just needed to know WHY she treated me so viciously during the past. And she simply didn't know. She was also telling me about all the self-destructive behaviors she was involved in and it sort of tore my heart out to see her suffering. The next day I was worrying about her and her needs and intuitively I knew that I wasn't emotionally strong enough to be her friend. I hadn't processed the hurt that she caused me. I still wanted an answer. And I didn't know how to set appropriate limits and boundaries with her. So I tried to have a conversation expressing this, but it didn't go well, she simply couldn't understand what I was trying to express. She cried a lot and felt attacked, and so I told her that I wasn't emotionally healthy enough to continue the friendship, but I tried to validate her as a person.

Sixth step: I went into counseling, finally. I learned that she had BPD. I finally had the answer that I wanted. I finally had the explanation. She didn't want to hurt me. She had certain types of feelings for me (not the love that I felt for her). But she had to destroy me. I learned about how I wasn't alone in this pain. That I wasn't crazy (nobody could understand how I could still be hurt years later).

Seventh step: I then discovered Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy. And I have been in the process of using the meditation techniques to expose myself to the pain and to simply feel it. This has been an enormously helpful process. I accepted that I was abused. I accepted the fact that I let myself be abused, but that I did the best I could in the situation (she fulfilled certain needs that I had, and that the withdrawal from her was very much like the withdrawal from heroin so that's one reason why I keep going back). I use a combination of radical acceptance and loving kindness meditations to process and feel the pain. And I finely feel closure. I needed the intellectual explanation (The Science of Evil may help, and certain chapters of The Happiness Hypothesis on trauma) and the meditation to finally let go. I can accept and still feel love towards her and not have any desire to go back to her, to relive memories, or to save her. I can feel compassion for what happened to her and for the pain she is probably experiencing to this day. But at the same time, I can pull back from the experience (sometimes I use the visual image, that she (when it comes to close relationships) is a three year old with a heroin habit, doing whatever she can to stop the pain). That allows me to detach from the actual events that occurred, because I was always trying to come up with a logical explanation for how things happened the way they did, when there simply isn't.

Eighth step: I actually am currently resisting getting in touch with her again. I feel like I finally understand her and that if I set extremely clear boundaries and validated her, that maybe she would eventually do the painful therapy that might allow her to find some stability. But I'm not going to. I know that it probably wouldn't work (maybe it would in 10 years). And I know that I'm still probably not emotionally healthy enough to actually find the correct way to be a friend to her. At the same time, it kills me to know that she is probably suffering and probably causing other people to suffer. And then I simply meditate about The Full Catastrophe of life, as Jon Kabat-Zinn would say (a very good book if you want to learn about mindfulness meditation, I would recommend the audio version, I think it's posted on youtube).

I'm not trying to sound like an a$$hole here, but i'll probably come out sounding as such... I find a lot of this to be somewhat weird.

If she's like me then she'd probably be saying "what's that?" "why do you mean it?" etc.

What makes this especially weird to me is you're in a relationship with another woman, and yet you're wanting so much from this ex. I think you should be asking yourself what is lacking in your current relationship, and is she someone you really love or merely a replacement...

To me your closure is... this relationship has run it's course. You admitted in your post that you knew she loved you. You KNOW that. The relationship has now ended, she's moved on, she's asked for no contact. You're entitled to nothing else from her. It may not be what you want but that's what you're getting.

I want so badly to write my ex, and ask very nicely but directly for her to come to me in person, end this silence, apologise, help me mend the wounds, square the whole relationship, it's meaning, and it's ending, give me my full due, and actually SHOW me that love she said she'd always have for me, in the days after she left me. I need to heal, and she really does have the power to do that. All psychobabble aside; when an abuser comes to the used/abused/loved one, and says "I'm truly sorry," I did really love you, you are not crazy...it can heal, I believe.

And all the above to me is idealizing her and her abilities. How would her saying "I loved you" (past tense), but now were over, I'm sorry and please don't contact me again... help you to heal? It doesn't and it won't.

You seem to have a lot of conflict with past vs the present. I think you'd be more constructive in finding out what is lacking in your current relationship, and do what you can to make this relationship more fulfilling.

-cbox

Thanks to all who have replied so far: it's all helpful, and I hope a few more folks offer their experience. I would reply to each post, but can't see a reply button except on my post, and the most recent reply, so I'll itemize this reply:

Thanks, Serenity 333:
You said it is normal to have these feelings of anger and confusion, etc., but it's not necessarily wise to act on them. Huh, that is true. Her general approach to me, post-relationship has been "Be there for me if, when, and how I need you, and please let me move on, when that's what I want." I hate to say that, but it is true. It is so hard to reconcile such selfishness in one who you've loved so much. I keep remembering the really sweet person she almost was. The clearer picture is that she wants to be all that, but falls well short. If I ever treated her the way she often did me, I would never have the courage to speak to her. Hmmm, perhaps she'd say "that's what I mean...when I think of you, it just hurts, because I treated you so badly, and you loved me so well...I loved you so much, but I could not take care of you, and it broke my heart." In fact, that's what she said in many ways, at our first longterm breakup at year three.
Serenity, you also said I likely already have my answer. That's hard! And probably true. That is, she is likely only to act in her interest. If and when, she is motivated to speak to me, it will probably be for her, unless and until she has rounded another very significant corner in her personal work. She did spend years trying to be less reactive with me; she succeeded. Toward the end of our contact, she told me on the phone: "I could only curb my anger and reactivity because you gave me the long example of how to be kind with the one I love. I could only change that way, because I loved you enough to want it bad enough. I could never do it for myself, but I did it with you."
I do hope she will round the next corner, and be happier & more stable. I believe, through continued work, she can. When, I don't know, but she certainly did change for the better in our time. (What I always prayed so dearly for...I wanted to be with her for the duration).
Also, thanks for reminding me about my present lover; of course, I want to settle with her. It is my greatest desire, to love & be loved, and just move on. Thanks! I hope God has in fact opened that window. You be well.
P.S: These smiley faces are way too freakin' upbeat.
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ScottisGone74:
Thank you for your reminder (I may never get true closure). Makes sense; As one suffering from BPD, however high-functioning, her basic dilema in life, is a mind and emotions that morph from moment to moment, and day to day. (I wish she did not have to carry that intense burden!) If life is unresolved for her, how can she resolve our relationship with me? She just has to move on. And though her fiancee may indeed be the right man for her to spend her life with, if I were given the chance to be in his shoes, to be back together, and get married...I would have to decline, because I believe in my heart of hearts that she would just leave me later, when the devastation would be far worse. Apropos, then, that you mention that our BPD exes don't just ride off into the sunset with their lovers. They likely act out the same patterns...I'll add, with a new twist, with new closeness, new awareness, and new hurts, insecurities, and unique ways to injure, despite their best intentions. May it not be so.One day, she may settle enough to stay put (as much as any "normal" person can). But I wouldn't put myself in that position again.
You said, "Get healthy." : I was in eight therapy sessions a month for eight months. It did jack **** for me. It was TIME, and getting OFF of antidepressants that healed me most. (I KNOW therapy and drugs can do wonders for some people, or some of the time; I was ready for neither!) As to physical conditioning; I have been an athlete since I was a kid; I only know being in great shape, and one thing I did in this horrible year, was get in even better shape. Despite the grief and insane anxiety, I managed to get to the same level of conditioning that I was in at age 15. At 48, that's the new normal. As crappy as all this was, THAT really kept me alive. And when the Wellbutrin left my system, and the suicidal fantasies went from 300 times a day to 30 times a day, and the bullet train of fear came to a near stop, I found that experiencing love again-no surprise-is the best medicine. [i]I hope you get that, too.
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Hey, Somethingtolose:
Thank you for your detailed account. Man, my first thoughts on your post were: "Don't do it, are you crazy? Don't go out with her...don't rescue her...don't anything with her!" Like you said, (and I say this with compassion), she is only living as she can, at it hurts her a LOT to go through this. I hate what my ex did to me, and I want it to end , but I don't really think she's happy. I think her life is really painful, just like it always was...she's just calmer about it now. God knows what her fiancee may have already suffered, or might. And every time she hurts him, she has more hurt to undo, more burdens to carry.
I really hope YOU continue to move on. I appreciate all the literature and therapy options you mentioned. All I can say for now, is tht I am trying to accept every aspect of where I was, and am...so I can get better...stop fighting the present reality, and MAYBE, it will get a lot better. FWIW, I had some moderate panic attacks when I was age 19-26. Just a few a year. One day at age 26, I sat up in bed as a panic attack set in. I said aloud to myself:"Go ahead, kill me." The attack went away immediately, and I knew I would never have one again. 22 years later, that's entirely true. If I can accept more aspects of suckiness in my life, they can get better, sooner. at least I won't be fighting myself. I realize that's the most deadly thing. Thank You.
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Hello cbox:
Well, you certainly get to the point. You offer a perspective my ex showed me a few times. It's that rather cold, fact-based view on love and life, and I believe it's borne of a lifetime struggling with really cold realities; to someone coping with BPD traits, the fight gets REALLY old, really tiresome, really painful. Because it can go on and on for days and months. You just get worn out. If you're out of compassion for yourself, you have none for your lover, or your ex. Then you recover, thank God, and things are better. It is cyclical, and hopefully the cycle rolls gradually upward toward more freedom.

It's good to hear you put it so bluntly. Because that bluntness, that "I can't and won't do any better than this" orientation, is a very real side of BPD. It is really hard for nons to ACCEPT it. In fact, what you have all reminded me of, is that my problem is not so much recognizing the 360-degree nature of my ex, but ACCEPTING it. As long as we were together, I did accept it, all of it. Losing her, and the future life we had once both wanted, THAT made her complexity unacceptable to me. My attachment makes it so hard to accept what I know, in my heart. She did love me, a lot. She did want to be with me for life. She was awful toward me a lot. She could even be willfully malicious once in a while. She usually knew better, and had deep emotional insight, but sometimes, she was mildly delusional, mildly paranoid. She needed so much love, but would refuse it a lot, too. She wanted to give me what I needed, but rarely had the knowledge or strength to be a real, abiding partner, however awesome a lover she was. She did also grow, irrespective of her BPD. BPD indeed colors her whole life. But it is NOT her WHOLE life. She wore me, her, and us out as a BPD, but she also just got tired of how it was, as a whole, real person. She left the relationship in a BPD way for sure, but she still needed to get away from me. Love can fail. It failed this time. It doesn't mean she hates me, or even stopped loving me. Six months after she disappeared, she pled with me on the phone to believe and know that she loved me, and always would. She just doesn't love me in that romantic way...she doesn't want to live her life with me anymore.
The mind-scrambling aspect of loving a BP so empathically, is that I followed her down every wormhole, and out into space, further and further; then my guiding star simply disappeared, and where the hell was I ? It is SO disorienting. Now I question things I never questioned before.
She's still a BPD. She's also more than all that. I will never KNOW exactly what she feels, or how often it changes, and changes back. Having been through the wringer of BPD with her...sharing her pain and her pleasure, I am affected...destabilized...still getting my direction back, and it will take the time it takes. I WISH she'd do me the loving favor of giving me closure...if she could, she would. It might backfire big time, if I ask for it. Hard to accept. But I do see it. Hopefully I can be as clear tomorrow, as I am tonight.

Thank you, cbox. Hope you get what you're looking for.

It boils down to this: They know somwething is wrong but do not love you or themselves enough to seek help and they do not love you the way you love them. When you accept this you can move on knowing you still love them but accepting you can do nothing for them. If you really love them let them go and leave them alone, you are not abandoning them (which was my fear) you are no longer hurting them by trying to make a disfunctional relationship work. I still, and probably always will, love my ex but accept the above and it has helped me start to heal. Someone else can hurt her now but not me - I love her too much to want to hurt her.

Hi 2b,

What you're experiencing must be extremely tough. I agree with some of the other comments here that sometimes we might not have the opportunity to seek closure in a direct way, and so its down to each person to decide how to move on. It takes time... years.

I went through a similar route to yourself - bpdex was going through a horrible time at work, our relationship suffered, and in the end I tried patching things up saying to myself that we'll get through this. Instead my health got worse and I ended up being prescribed propranolol by the doctor. As soon as my ex found out she was distraught and broke up with me. We didn't really speak for much of 2015. Fast forward to summer 2016 and we slowly saw each other more, but alas it was still very tough for her - even just to meet for coffee. I wrote a heartfelt letter saying that we needed to create a healthier boundary to look after ourselves and keep communication/trust open - my ex reacted badly asking for no contact, which I respected - it was a horrible time, but after 6 months she reached out again (just last week). I replied and we're now speaking again.

I guess what I'm saying is that sometimes two people can care about each other very much, but the relationship itself moved on a long time ago. Each person is going to be different, and sometimes its up to you to make a decision to help you. In my mind theres still a hope/doubt/wish, but I also know that whats more important is her health and my health.