Asking for input

Thank you all for the feed back.
I know what i want and need and i hope all of you will be there to help with my journey.

Airwolf - Its nice that you followed Bam's advice and came to this forum. Welcome.

I noticed that you mentioned that some of the posts from the nons are "harsh" and I understand that it could have bothered you. However, you have to realize that nons can only be expected to speak harsh especially since they are mostly going through a very harsh experience themselves. They will also be bitter, since they have just swallowed a bitter pill. Infact what makes it worse for them is that the bitter pill was sugar-coated on the outside and its only later that they have been left with bitterness. My advice to you would be to see the "pain" behind the harshness and the bitterness, without any judgement. It will help you realize their point of view.

You will also notice that behind the harshness, bitterness and pain, there is also a longing amongst nons to help their HPD partners. I guess its this same motive that led Bam to ask you to come here.

This forum might not be a way for you to get Bam back into your life or provide you with a shortcut to remove your loneliness. If that is what you have come here for you might be disappointed. The members of this forum, nons or sufferers of HPD, will not suddenly become sympathetic to you and lobby with Bam to take you back. That is not what this forum is for and we have no right to do that either.

However, this forum can be a place for you to augment your self-learning, along with what C&H suggested to you in terms of seeking professional help. The best utilization of this forum would be if you use this forum, understand and learn and then finally leave this forum never having the need to come back again. There is no shortcut here. You will have to take the path that will be long and difficult. If you do take a shortcut, you might find yourself coming to this forum again, which we wish no member has to do, ever.

Bam - You are an intelligent girl and a courageous one too. I am sure there is nothing much I can tell you that you don't already know. Its been 7 months since my breakup, and during the first month I did break my No Contact several times, getting sucked in. I realized in that one month the futility of my empathy - conditional promises, more manipulation and so on. But its been a whole 6 months now and I remain complete NC. The truth about complete NC is that you suddenly start to realize how you had given up your life to someone and that you finally have it back - you give yourself the permission to exit the PD conditioned fantasy and come back to reality.

I must say that my ex was a bit surprised that I could break free. She tried her best to string me along. However, the truth is that you can't "bind" a person who sees reality for long. Infact "binding" someone is plain abuse - a relationship has to be based on "bonding" and there is a difference between the two. The fact is that without complete NC, and with your empathy-tinted glasses, this difference gets blurred and hazy and you mistake one for the other. This is why its so important to get distance, time and perspective while you get back to reality.

Whatever, you do Bam, keep in mind what they teach you on a airplane before takeoff. You got to help yourself first before you can help anyone else. So use complete NC, take a long long long long time away, heal yourself, and when you feel that you can't be "binded", when your empathy-tinted glasses don't cloud your realistic judgement, when you no longer rationalize away your instincts, then and only then, think of helping anyone else.

Bam

Oh, I know only too well how you are feeling. The aftermath of the breakup - almost like a death where you still cannot really believe it happened. It is HARD HARD HARD to detach from someone you have cared so deeply for and been so intimate with, especially given that your ending was not after a big confrontation or massive row, in fact quite the opposite. The door on your relationship therefore was left still slightly open.

confused and hurt wrote:We have all made the mistake of not just walking away at some point in these relationships, when we knew better and remained our own worst enemy. Also, how important the no contact rule is for our own personal healing.

Your life now needs to take a different fork in the road and you need to clear the way for whatever is coming next - you cannot do this if you are going to be a 'friend' to the person you are trying to move on from. Remember - this man you are trying so hard to enlighten and cure and fix is the same person who caused you all the pain and hurt and who blatantly and knowingly lied and cheated on you.

Yumi is right - it is too soon.

newtohpd wrote:give yourself the permission to exit the PD conditioned fantasy and come back to reality.

I am as NC as I can be with my (ex) husband - I also am thankful for the physical distance between us and the 7 hour time difference. Our communication is limited to necessary subjects (kids/money/house). 90% of this communication is by e-mail and occasionally by instant messenger - we rarely speak on the phone.

I try not to exchange any emotion with him, and I do not provide him with any details of what I am up to. This is proving to be a good strategy for me, as the less enjoined I am with him, the more space I have cleared in my head to better understand who I am, what I need, how I should have seen the warning signs a long time ago and most importantly - start planning my own future where he is not part of it. I think you are very brave and very generous to have provided your ex with access to all of your postings on the forum. Your desire to help him understand HPD and his behaviours is so great I can almost taste it. However - you know it will take more than just reading and participating on the forum and - most importantly - you now have to let him find his own way forward and let go.

SM&H
xx

Bam,

What I say may be nothing new to you but sometimes hearing other people say what you’ve been thinking in your head helps you decide which way to go. This is what this forum has done for me and I believe this is why a lot of us are here. We know what we should do but we second guess ourselves. Encouragement from others who went through the same experience helps us convince ourselves that we are doing the right thing.

On the issue of “being friends”: Even with relationships between ‘normals’ we cannot suddenly switch from being romantically involved to “just friends” with a snap of a finger. It takes time to lick your wounds and stop obsessing about what went wrong. You will need some time away from the person for you not to be reminded of the pain, for you to stop second guessing your decision to end the relationship, for you to stop clinging to your hopes that it will eventually work out.

As we all know, relationships with PDs are not your usual run off the mill kind of relationships. It requires special handling from beginning to end. As I see from the posts on this forum, it takes longer for the ‘victims’ to heal. Knowing it’s a PD we were dealing with is not the answer to all the questions and it does not alleviate the pain the relationship left us with. Our heads say “Well, she had a disorder. It was nothing personal. Get over it. Move on.” However, our hearts and emotions don’t catch up as easily as we’d like it to. This is why we need the distance. In getting out of a relationship with a PD, sometimes you don’t realize how deep your wounds are, how badly you’ve been bleeding because you were never allowed to feel pain. You were conditioned into thinking you’re overreacting, oversensitive, paranoid, or just plain crazy for thinking their actions are improper, offensive, unacceptable, or hurtful. It was always about them; you were too busy trying to understand them, trying to help them, keeping the relationship afloat that you ignored your pain. Only when they are not around, when you are not dealing with their ‘crisis’, when you do not have to walk on eggshells, when you are allowed to be alone with your emotions do you fully realize the extent of their emotional abuse and how deeply it affects you (or even damaged you). I think the fact that we keep coming back to the forum is proof that the wounds are really deep and we cannot just “snap out of it” no matter how much we want to or how hard we try.

I understand your intention to help him (I used to feel that way) but like most of the posters here have said, you have to let your wounds heal first if you really want to do this. We cannot save a drowning person if we don’t know how to swim. If you stay in his life you will be running on a treadmill; you will go nowhere because it will still be about him. You may be denying yourself a chance at your own happiness because you will still be worrying about him. How long are you willing to do that to yourself? In keeping your distance, you may be surprised at how much you will enjoy living without the useless drama and decide to keep it that way. I’ve tried it. It works great! This is why I do not want to let her back in. By being away from her, I am suddenly stress-free, able to appreciate my life and get my self-esteem back. Of course that’s only until she decides she’s not done with me yet and resume the stalking…… I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

In what way has she been stalking you?

Bam and Airwolf, don't you think it would be more beneficial to actually talk to each other rather than you both post on here to each other? Don't you think that some things should be kept private? Why do you want all and sundry to know the intimate parts of your life?

Sofrance, I think Bam realizes she has sacrificed her own support of this forum to him. I believe she realized this mistake.

Contact with him at this point whether directly or indirectly would be wrong. As Newtohpd said, she needs no contact in any way. Bam knows this now, and what is best for her own personal healing. Hopefully she will not post and not read his posts should he choose to do so. Hard not to do, but probably best.

I guess the advantage Bam has over most of is, he admitted he has issues and apologized, whether sincere or not or whether HPD or not.. Rare for those that have cheated and lied to us and everything else, whether HPD or not. I wish I could have been so lucky as most on this forum probably feel. Whether truly sincere or not. Hopefully sincere!!

As Newtohpd wrote ,short cuts are no good. I guess me case in point. I am six months out of my relationship and still feel the effects. I thought I was over it and a much stronger person than I truly was. My own denial only prelonged my recover, plus the constant contact from her family, which I have cutoff. Now finally I am coming to terms with my own short comings. Not as strong a person I thought I was. You sofrance, helped me realize that well, along with the recent posts from mucisian, normal and newtohpd....they were trluy enlightning and I thank you all...I am sure Bam has learned this now as well.

Airwolf...we are not here to judge. And yes we will support you. I am not the best one to do that, as I don't have the knowledge of most on here. Again, you should go for professional help, as this forum cannot diagnoses you, but only offer suggestions and support. As NEWTOHDP wrote, people on here will give you honest opinions to make you think. Bam would not want it any other way and she hopes you are being sincere in your intentions. I hope you honor what Bam has sacrificed for you and continue to post here, plus go for help.

She gave up her own healing support life line thinking you truly see the pain you caused her. I hope you honor what she gave up for you and get better. I hope as a result of this, you do get better, so you can have a happy successful future and great relationships yourself someday. Oh what a gift.

C&H

thanks to all again for being up front. i will honor what bam has done for me, and cont to read

Wow! Bam and Airwolf. Its the first time I have seen this forum used as a mediation tool with this condition. I suppose it is after all annonymous, so why not, worth a try. Would getting some couple therapy with a trained therapist not be more approptiate/helpful/adapted? In any case good luck, I hope it works out nice for you both.

Best regards, Musician.

Bam, I tried your approach mid-way through my 8 yr relationship on the 3rd or 4th breakup. After a month of true NC (mainly because she didn't contact me) my ex offered to be "friends" and have lunch occassionally. I will admit there was a big hole in my life, I missed HER and what I thought we had and yes, I had found this site by then but I thought surely my ex's promises of reform were signigicant and that some of the posters on here just didn't know everything. We did remain "friends" for a short time, and during the friendship phase I still was dosed with all the somatics and family crises as before, then we started meeting at other times than lunch, she was going to therapy, she knew which issues to proclaim were improving and insidiously I was sucked back in before I knew it. Looking back now, had I stayed gone then my recovery would have been over three years ago rather than going through it again now.

Everything you've read on this board about being pulled back in is true, it happens. While reentering a dating relationship with him might not occur, contact on any level continues to exposes you to the drama, deceit and the rest of the dysfunctions that sucked the life out of you. It's your choice and you don't owe anyone here an explanation as to why, just keep in mind there's a reason a legion of previous members have pounded into subsequent members true NC.