can anyone relate to these feelings when dumped?

there are only a handful of ppl i have ever met in my life that i felt i could trust and most importantly that i felt they could really see me and they validated my life. yes, that sounds pathetic but i usually feel completely invisible in our individualistic and competitive society.

when they have left...and they all do....i am utterly devestated....i dont mean like a normal break up. i mean it is like losing the one person in the world that made me feel safe and secure.

it is waking up terrified. going to bed to have strange nightmares. going through the day almost in tears feeling more like a freak than i already feel i am. it is the total reaffirmation of every abusive thing that has happened to me always resulting in me feeling like it is all my fault, i am bad, i am unworthy and how i have w,x,y,z, people to prove it.

usually whenever i am in the throes of depression i cry about my dad, how he abused me, how i never had a relationship with him, how all i have ever wanted was just to be safe.

to have a family, somewhere to belong.

when i meet that special man that makes me feel this way i hold onto him FOR DEAR LIFE!!!! it is like it a matter of life and emotional death to me. i cling, i am frightened, i try to fake it in the begining that i am so happy, for really i am happy!!!! happy that i have met someone who LIKES ME! and wants to be around me. then the man starts to notice my sadness, i tell him about my awful life, he usually stays, but somehow we always break up...actually i am always dumped.

then i must relive the experiences of childhood negelct and abandonment and all that stuff all over.

worse yet, when we argue i scream and yell and rage and i must look like a total psychopath. i am generally so very quiet and i do mean quiet...i dont interact with ppl..but holy god when i get mad....luckily i have not been arrested for fighting for about four years now....when i was a teen i was always fighting,...god was i angry at the abuse i was dealing with at home...i would always cry after getting into a fight because that is not what i am or who i want to be. ppl make fun of you, act afraid of you, or just reject and ostracize you ...you meaning me...and its like validating what i know....or maybe i just self sabotage.


well....presently i am 32 years old and apparently i can still get mad enough to make other students feel the need to try to kick me out of college. all i did was cuss...not at them directly...but i was shaking with adrenaline.

it doesnt take long for ppl when they really know me to think i'm crazy.

well....so when the man i love has had enough and leaves, i go back to hating myself, wanting to die, feeling the way i did all the years of my life growing up. using the anger to get me through the day.

i am making it my mission in life to stop these behaviors.


i also attract very dominating and abusive men who like to prey on my fear of abandonment.

sometimes i dont know who to trust or what to do or how to make sense of my life!!!!


if i could just make sense of my life.

if i could just give my social history small talk when meeting someone like.....

i'm so and so...i graduated from such and such and this is my job and this is my husband and these are my kids....with that big cheesy smile on my face!

instead i try to avoid superficial introductions if possible because WOW...if ppl only knew.

can anyone relate to what i have said?

I can relate to everything you just said. I always get dumped too, always in a very harsh and brutal way and I never get to speak to the girl again. When I'm with someone in a relationship I feel like a real person with a sense of purpose and a sense of life affirmation. When I'm alone I go back to being nothing and no one, it feels like you're trapped in a dark basement where no one will find you and you can't get yourself out without another person to help you. Being dumped is hard for most people but probably it's even worse when you have something like BPD. I know for certain if I were in a relationship now my life would be ten times better.

Totally relate. I have always been the dumped one. I didn't have childhood abuse but I have BPD for other reasons, mainly because I was a very artistic personality in a domineering family with perfectionist standards. Never could live up to it. And I've had abusive and disordered boyfriends. But anyhoo..
I also feel like I attach myself to my romantic relationships in a very intense way. I consider myself very attractive, and I attract a lot of men, but I just can't keep em to save my life! Usually it happens because I am depressed or always on edge/nervous and generally I will start acting squirrley. Things are great in the beginning, but as soon as my more volitile or intense emotions start to show, they run for the door. I also have a habit of choosing people who are the LEAST likely to be patient with me. Mainly really self-centered, immature or emotionally stunted people themselves.
When someone leaves me its like my whole life has ended. I suddenly lose all motivation to do anything that might make me happy. I unconsciously starve myself by being too emotionally drained or overwrought that I dont feel like eating. I usually do really embarrassing things to win somebody back if I think there's a chance I can. I'll fake emergencies and crisises to make them come running to me, or I'll just emotionally melt down and text and write emails to them that are long and really should never be seen by anyone. But this just ends up with them pitying me and makes me feel worse about it. When I get past this activity and I see there is no chance of winning them back, and I cannot deny they are gone forever, I will sink so low into depression and go so deep into all the hurts of my past, basically linking the experience to EVERYTHING that has ever hurt me and sometimes even to ideas of whats going to hurt me in the future. The fear that it will happen over and over is one thing that has made me pursue therapy. But nothing can describe the horror of me in the wake of being dumped. Its pure miserable hell, and because I am so emotionally torn up and weary, I cant do the same things other people would do to get over it, like take care of themselves and do things that make them happy. Its all I can do to just lie around and try to stop the horrible thoughts and feelings.

Wow read my posts. Just like me.

"it is the total reaffirmation of every abusive thing that has happened"

That is a great way to put. I totally agree.

Thing is it all adds up to nothing...cause it was all about us. Never the other person.

Ditto. It's really hard not to fall into thinking "It's always like this, it always will be, it's never going to change."

I've dumped as well as been dumped, but only because I was being treated incredibly badly. It's slightly easier to deal with, but I never do it calmly and maturely, and I still obsess over why it had to happen.

I was thinking the other day that being dumped reminds me of being buried alive (specifically I was thinking of the film "The Vanishing"). Trapped, alone, doomed, panicked, powerless---by someone who is going merrily on their way, with a bright future and not a thought in their head about me. Ugh.

It drives me nuts that being dumped doesn't seem to affect so many other people at all. Why can't I dust myself off and move on like them instead of going to pieces for months on end?

For me it's the fear of being alone, combined with the wound of "not being good enough". That second thing is the part that stabs the deepest. Especially when they cut off all contact like you just do not matter at all. It almost feels like that means I have NO good qualities at all. Not even enough to make them want to ever speak to me again, or think about me, or anything. I'm just plain awful, not just not good enough- but worthless.

Yeah! "You're no good, you're not wanted, you're a burden, you're a disappointment..." It's like, what, have I gone back in time to my childhood, listening to my parents? (And how much of this is just me reading stuff into it that the ex never felt or thought?)

I will say, though, that I gave my ex the chance to cut off contact completely or to whatever extent she wanted. All I asked was that she not jerk me around or leave me in limbo.

Of course that's exactly what she did, and that was even worse than being told upfront, "I never want to have any contact with you again" (which I assume she just didn't have the guts to say or take responsibility for).

Yes I suppose that is true about it being better than being jerked around. Although I would say that to get dumped is to be jerked around to begin with.
I think also that BPD people with their severe attachment and idealization probably make really good fallback boys/girls for Nons who are inclined to treat people as such. I"ve had more than one boyfriend cut me off entirely only to come crawling back when he's out of luck with some other girl. I never take them back, I cant stand the thought of being second best. But it still baffles the crap out of me when someone who put me thru so much pain by telling me they wanted nothing to do with me would pop back in several months or even a year down the road.

artemis08 wrote:And I've had abusive and disordered boyfriends.

artemis08 wrote:I also have a habit of choosing people who are the LEAST likely to be patient with me. Mainly really self-centered, immature or emotionally stunted people themselves.

artemis08 wrote:I think also that BPD people with their severe attachment and idealization probably make really good fallback boys/girls for Nons who are inclined to treat people as such. I"ve had more than one boyfriend cut me off entirely only to come crawling back when he's out of luck with some other girl.

Yes, this is something that annoys me. I was having a conversation with someone about it and they summed it up by saying that many people mistake 'NONs' as 'normies' (I hate both of those terms btw). There are a lot of NONs floating about, mostly lurking, who are as disordered as their BPD partner or family member--they just have something else (I know this doesn't apply to all of you btw!). Also, as you've said there's perfectly 'normal', 'healthy' individuals who have nothing they can be DX'd with who are abusive, dominating and even violent men and women who see nothing wrong with their behavior. The only thing they can be labeled with really is being 'troubled' or having 'issues' which can also be used as a cop-out for said person; and when said to the person it can encourage their behavior, "hey, I'm just troubled and have issues, ya know..."

BPD can cause people to mistreat those we love in our lives; but just as most half-way decent people in the world, DX or no DX, borderlines realize that their behavior isn't right and to varying degrees regret it, own up to it and feel remorse (sometimes to a fault) Unfortunately, it is all too often in hindsight. They'll generally try to make amends somehow, though.

Never mind the invisible ways BPD effects people that hurts no one but the afflicted.

There are abusive 'normies' all about who think that "You deserved it.", or "I hurt you because I love you.", or "Why do you make me do this to you?!", or "I only act that way because of you!" regardless of that fact that they act that way towards everyone. Any of those sound familiar, by the way?

Peace

And yes OP, I relate to every bit of that.