I rang him today.....now I feel worse!

I'd been doing so well at the none contact, remarkably well. But the Easter break has been particularly long, lonely and difficult for me.....and as with any addiction holiday time is always the worst....so I fell off the wagon and now I'm a bit down on myself.

i had a bit of a revelation today as I was taking my dogs for a walk, that my BPD ex had maybe not been acting like a total prick, that he may in essense been trying to protect me.

Long story, but he has a 16 year old daughter, who lives with her mother, her mother hits her and the daughter hits the mother and the mother frequently throws her out of the house. This daughter takes drugs, not just dope, I caught her with something which I think was cocaine. She also is very promiscuous as well as being very abusive mainly to her father. She calls him names such as loser, mentally challenged loser, f**king retard etc etc. There was a period of time 18 months ago after her mother threw her out and this kid was having a really bad time, that David and I took her in (he had only just started living with me then). He wasn't working, and I was forking out the bills now for him and his daughter, as her mother refused to relinquish her family benifit payments. When I questioned her about this, she stated that my BPD ex had not paid any maintenence for years so it was his turn to have the kid. I went a long with it because I loved the guy so much I would have done anything for him. Anyway things turned very sore, the kid kept running away from school, hated the small town we were living in and really started to create havoc. It was no surprise to me that my BPD ex couldn't cope with the kid, so I was left to work, run the house and handle his child. Things got pretty hairy for a while, and it was soon obvious that the girl was jealous of my relationship with her father, and was dead set on splitting us up, we swore we wouldn't let it happen. Anyway this kid was constantly fighting with her father, and I must admit that I didn't like or agree with the way he tried to handle her which is why I stepped in.
She kept dropping clangers, to put seeds of doubt into my mind about her father. She said to her father in my presence that if I ever found out the truth of what was really happening in this small town that I would kick my BPD ex out the door so quick. I asked her father what she was talking about...and he stated he hadn't a clue. Then she told me he was bi-polar and she had the papers at home to prove it.....why she thought this would worry me I don't know because I had already guessed he had something a little more severe than bi-polar. Then the next clanger she dropped, was telling me it was her father that had got her on drugs, and that he had given her dope and speed when she was 13. I just thought she was being a vindictive teen and trying to split us up so I ignored it. BUT when I met my BPD he was sharing a house with this 21 young entrepreneur, who owns a string of second hand shops. He was my BPD's obsession at that time, and he became an 'enterpreneur', wore the bling and started using drugs.....to fit into this mans lifestyle. His daughter was about 13 at that stage and use to regularly stay with her father and this young man. So looking back now its feasable that he did get her on drugs, or certainly exposed her to that lifestyle.

This child has really decided she hates me, after I took her in and tried to be a mother to her, I set her boundaries which she wasn't used to. The last time she was at my place was xmas, and she totally ruined xmas by having frequent temper tantrums and again verbally abusing everyone around her especially her dad. She didn't want to be with us, she wanted to be with her mother and her friends. One day she was so nasty to my BPD ex that I rang up her mother and told her I was sending her back, and with my BPD ex approval, we put her on the next plane. I told my BPD ex and his ex partner that I didn't want to see this kid again until she was able to treat her father with respect. My BPD ex would quite often just sit there and let this kid throw abuse at him and I could never understand why he allowed it.

Anyway I had a revelation yesterday. His breaking up with me, was not about me or him, or him not loving or wanting me anymore, it was about his daughter. He's not a sociopath, he does feel guilt and remorse, I know that to be true.

My thoughts are that, he realised I was getting firmer with him, was not putting up with as much as I was previously, my eyes were opening and eventhough I still loved him my love wasn't blind. He had been talking about him moving up to live with me permanently in a few weeks. Part of the argument we had had on that last day, was apart from me refusing to buy him an iphone, was also that his daughters behaviour was still atrocious, and he still wasn't doing the right thing by her, and I was still saying I needed her to stop verbally abusing her dad before she could stay in my house again.

He realised this wasn't going to happen so realised that he couldn't live with me hence the dumping. Also, he knows he is responsible for his daughter behaving like she does, so that is why he doesn't tell her off, why he doesn't set bounderies, why he just gives her things, and apparantly rewards bad behaviour. She is a product of him, she is his creation and he realises that he has made so many mistakes with her it is unbelievable.....infact she displays alot of the same traits as he does. He realises he has to cope with her, because she is his daughter and he is responsible for her being the juvenile offender that she is (she steals also, and performs sexual acts for drugs....I think) but he does not have to inflict her negativity on me. So in one aspect he was protecting me, and in another aspect it was all about him being in denial about his illness....he obviously realises that it is not 'normal' parenting to give drugs to a 13 yearold. In many aspects he is very juvenile and child like, and if his current obsession said jump, he would say, how high.

Today, I misguidedly decided to ring him and let him know all this, so I rang him from my new home phone number, and surprize, surprize he answered the phone, but I hung up without talking, because I wondered what I was going to achieve. Eventhough it was a new phone number I'm sure he knew the call was from me, as he only knows a couple of people in my state and I'm sure with the others their number would have flashed up on the phone.

Now I'm left wondering why on earth I rang him, and why on earth he answered the phone, when answering phones is not his good point....he very rarely answered a number he doesn't recognise, so I'm sure he knew it was me.....

Sounds like the important thing was you realized there was nothing to be achieved by calling, even if it was a little late. People make mistakes, the main thing is that you recognized it as such!

Passenger wrote:Sounds like the important thing was you realized there was nothing to be achieved by calling, even if it was a little late. People make mistakes, the main thing is that you recognized it as such!

Agreed.