I broke up with my 47 y/o BPD ex GF and need guidance/Help!

Hi everybody. I’m new to this forum. I’m a 47 y/o male that’s been in an on/off relationship with a 47 y/o uBPD woman for nearly 7 years. It’s been more off than anything because anytime we would stsrt to get close, she’d push me away and sabotage the relationship in some way. Sometimes she would run back to exes and add them on her FB and then she’d come begging me back. At first she’d come begging back within 24 hours. Over the years it’s gotten longer and longer. Average is 2 weeks and it’s been as long as 3 months before I’d hear from her. There were a few times when she would try to stay the night with me and in the middle of the night she would leave without telling me. She told me that she would start to get major anxiety because she felt like she was getting too close and she got up and leave. There were a few times when she would try to stay the night with me and in the middle of the night she would leave without telling me. She told me that she would start to get major anxiety because she felt like she was getting too close and she got up and leave. It took her a very long time before she could start getting comfortable with me staying the night with her without her getting the anxiety. She told me that before she met me that she had done this other times with men but she never allowed herself to get close until she met me. She had told me about how she would get together with unavailable men because she knew that there would be no commitment there. She always told me that it was different with me though.

I have done a lot of research on borderline personality disorder of the past 5 1/2 years when I really started noticing her strange behaviors. At first I thought that she was just commitment phobic but she displayed other things besides just commitment issues. I know that there are nine criteria that can make up borderline personality disorder and then you have to meet at least five of those. She met seven of those on pretty much consistent basis. She feared commitment, she would fear intimacy as far as staying the night again was because she was all about making love, kissing, holding hands etc. She just had a difficult time staying the night with each other. Is this what some BPD’s do?

She lied alot of the time, shed make up crazy stories that I found were not even true, she’d emotionally cheat on me with men who she used to have flings or relationships with. She made all sorts of promises that she couldn’t keep. She was not a BPD that would really act outwardly. She was more of a quiet borderline. It she would at times lash out at me calling me names if I tried to leave. She threatened suicidal a couple times early in our relationship. She would try to find things wrong with me (fault searching). She feared abandonment bigtime. I’m ashamed to admit it but over 6 1/2 years time we broke up well over 100 times. Every time within a few days she’d come begging me back. I broke it off with her back at the end of 2014. I found out that she was trying to get with a guy that she went to high school with. This guys is a drunk, he has lived with his dad since 2007, he has no job, no car, he’s a womanizer, he is an ex felon, he lies, he cusses worse than a sailor, he tells everyone his business on social media and he is a menace to society. He’s the complete opposite of me. I’ve seen some people comment that he’s a full blown narcissist and if you read his posts and how he behaves, you’d agree. I’ve seen him get into many altercations on his FB with other people about politics etc and he gets very angry. He’s got serious anger issues.

She’s always told me that she would never be with an alcoholic, she won’t be with someone who won’t goto church with her, she doesn’t like cussing. In fact she would get on to me bigtime if I said one cuss word but she embraces him when he cusses like a sailor? He is everything that she has told me that she doesn’t want. She is very insecure and one thing that she really liked about me is that I didn’t have any female friends that I talked to but she would always freak out if I liked one woman in particular’s posts which was clearly innocent. She was always jealous of my ex-wife thinking that my ex-wife and I will get back together. I never gave her any signs at all that that was going to happen. I have been divorced since 2005 grand I have told her that I would never get back with my ex-wife. She would get upset because we would text each other about the kids. But what’s funny is, this narcissist that she is so hung up on is a womanizer. He’s good friends with his ex-wife and they leave each other comments on Facebook all the time, he’s constantly talking to other women on Facebook. How is she OK with all this with him but she was not OK with it with me?? I don’t understand that at all!

Her son started college a couple of years ago when she gets severe separation anxiety when he leaves. He is leaving again for Indiana. And a couple more days and he told her a couple months ago that he only has one year left and he may not be back to stay with her next summer. The next time that she will see him it was during Thanksgiving. I always took a backseat to her son. I understand that people put their kids first. I get that because I’m a parent as well. But there’s something called balance which is something that she could not do. I always came last, I was always a line low priority to her. It was all about her. The whole relationship. She did not care about my wants and needs even though she said that she did. She always said just the right things. She was/is a master of manipulation.

Anyways, I cut the cord on her back in 2014 after finding out about the “narcissist” but she didn’t let up. She would message me after days or weeks went by begging me to get back with her and I wouldn’t. This went on for almost 3 years. She kept telling me how she has changed, that she didn’t want to be with anyone else, that she is not the person who she was and doesn’t contact any of the men that she used to. She told me that she was going to counseling and that she realized what she did to me and felt horrible about it.

I finally gave in at the end of January this year and gave her one last chance because she really seemed like she had changed but there was a lot of work to do because I didn’t trust her. She told me that she would do whatever it took for her to fix that trust. This time around I didn’t see any signs of her sabotaging the relationship but it was still really hard for me to trust her from all the lying and her running back to men from her past. She is a homebody and she has always had a really bad habit of taking her time to text me back. She wouldn’t have this problem when she would try to get me back but when I would go back to her she would start creating distance again. Sometimes she would take 20, 30, 45 minutes or even an hour or two to get back with me when we were in the middle of a conversation. Total disrespect. She was in decent enough to write me back and told me that she was busy or whatever and she would get back to me. She would just leave me hanging and that upset me. That of course also got me feeling insecure and wondering what she was doing. We did pretty good from the end of January until she had a car accident while she was texting me during a disagreement in the middle of June. I feel so bad because I didn’t realize what time it was and I didn’t know that she was off work or else I wouldn’t have been texting her. I feel like she may blame me for that car accident but I’m not for sure.

I noticed that she started acting a little Distant about three weeks before the accident happened. I told her that I had a timeline in my head and that if we weren’t married in a certain amount of time, that I was going to leave her because I already wasted so much time on her already. During the course of this off and on relationship, she has friended and unfriended me on Facebook probably 20 times. I hadn’t been on her Facebook about three years but she finally added me back on Facebook at the end of May. That was her choice. I noticed a couple of weeks later she started liking a lot of posts of one of the Guys that she went to school with. I asked her about it and she got defensive and told me that I like women’s posts also. I told her that I didn’t like one specific woman’s post all the time like she was to him so just started making me feel insecure. Add that with her taking her time responding back and it made me start thinking things.

On June 30, we went on our last day. I took her to her favorite restaurant and then we left there and went to the mall and went looking around at Yankee candle, Bath and body works, just all the places that she wanted to go. I bought her some candy I want to chocolate shops in the mall. Then we went back to her house and we made love. I fell sleep and woke up in the middle of the night and we made love again. Then I went home. On the night of July 3 I started feeling really uneasy because she was still taking her time texting me back and she was still liking this guy’s post. I complained to her about me feeling like on the low priority to her because she would take her time texting me back and she also knew about how I felt about her liking that guy’s posts. The next day she responded and told me “maybe I just can’t make you happy“. I told her “well, maybe you can’t.” At that point we broke up and I have not heard from her since.

Like an idiot, I watch a Pinterest pictures she pins stuff on Pinterest as to how she feels at the time. I have also been watching her Facebook from a different account that I have along with the drug narcissist guy that she tried to get involved with back in 2014. We had a conversation about this guy about a week before we broke up. She told me that she hadn’t talk to him in over two years, that he was blocked on her Facebook and that she had no reason to ever contact him again and that she knew that he was bad news for her. A week after we broke up, she friended him back on Facebook. He’s apparently going through a really really messy break up with someone else that he’s “supposedly” been dating for over 3 years and he keeps posting stuff about it on FB. He’s even went so far to say things that pointed towards committing suicide. He does a lot of stuff on there for attention. Since he doesn’t work, he’s on Facebook from six in the morning until late at night posting things and commenting on other people‘s posts. He is a huge liar and has everybody thinking that he works when he’s on FB constantly. No job that I know of would allow anyone to be on Facebook from six or seven in the morning until 11 PM at night.

I know that borderlines and narcissists are the best worst relationship mixture from a psychological standpoint and I think that this may be why she so attached to him. I’m not going to put her down in any way because to me she’s beautiful but he dates women that are thinner and of a much higher caliber in the looks department, but according to her, they did kiss a few times back when she was trying to get with him in 2014.

Another thing that floors me is that she knows that he doesn’t match her criteria for a decent man. He’s the total opposite of what she saw that she wants. She posted on FB the day before yesterday that she made for him about him going through this rough time that he was “a great guy and deserved the best and to be ridiculously happy”. Wow! She told me a month before this that she knew that he was no good for her. I don’t get it at all. By what I can tell, they have been talking a lot. She’s been trying to console him but at the same time I also know that she’s trying to get with him. She also left a comment about how he is like family to her and that he knows that he is very close to her heart. WHAT???

I’m sorry for all the rambling. I’m so heart broken and I’m so pissed at myself for giving her another chance. I don’t blame myself at all. She always told me that I was the best thing that ever happened to her and that she knew that I was brave man that I processed all the qualities that she wanted in a man. She goes from someone like me to a total loser.

I have an appointment on Wednesday to see a psychologist to help me get through this. I don’t think she will ever try to Hoover me again. She knows that I know that she friended him back on Facebook because I did let her know that a week after we quit talking but she didn’t respond. I’m pretty sure that she knows that she nailed the last nail in the coffin because she knows what an issue I’ve had about her talking to this guy or other men from the past. There has only been one other time that she took this long to message me back and that was three years ago when I didn’t hear from her for 3 months. She knows that the damage is done and that I will never trust her. She told me that her therapist told her that if I can’t tourist her that she’s got to go and she told me before then we broke up that she was prepared to do that if she had to, but she said that she didn’t want to. I don’t know. I know that I was only in love with an illusion. I was in love with someone that don’t really exist. I know that the person who really exists is the person who has this disorder. My best friend has been so supportive of me and he’s telling me that I’ve got to let her go because I was in love with someone who did not exist. But it’s so hard for me to forget about the good times which there were very many. I was immensely attracted to her physically and I think I’ve missed that more than anything. She was everything that I wanted in a woman appearance wise. When we were physically together, we got along so great and we had so many fun times together when she wasn’t trying to create distance or sabotage. I know that I need to focus on how she treated me. She really took my self-esteem and stomped all over it. I know that I’ve got to stop reading her Pinterest and his and her facebooks.
I guess the reason why I do it is to make me hate her enough to finally let go. I posted this because I just want to get some ideas from people who’ve been through this before. What do these people do on the final discard? Is there any signs that was thrown up to let you know that they were finally completely done and the hovering stopped? I’d love to make some new friends on here. I feel so broken and lost.

Hey Zeetwentyeight,

You wrote a lot, so rather than address it all, I thought I'd comment on one aspect that you wrote a lot about...

It is not in your imagination that she is hung up this possible narcissist, sociopath, or psychopath. You are seeing it as it is. We see this here too, people with BPD or HPD spending a lot of time on the sub-forum for those with AsPD. Perhaps this will help? -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compartme ... psychology)

From your point of view, that's got to be painful. You are the person she says she wants, and probably a part of her does want, but how can you trust her or believe her when she is also obsessed with someone who is the opposite, and someone who'd likely take advantage of the opportunity presented itself. All that you hold yourself to can feel meaningless and pointless, and also there is that risk of betrayal on a whim.

Unfortunately, some people with cluster B disorders like BPD do compartmentalize. They pick others who fulfill certain roles, but because nobody can fill every role, they also may damage their relationships as they switch between whatever role they are idealizing in the moment. It's especially difficult on he/she who fills the safe, supportive, honest, role. As you no doubt know, this other person, opposite role, has no emotional investment, doesn't care, cannot be hurt, but you can.

Please write as you need, but you did made the right decision to say enough, I cannot do this anymore.

Longer term thought -

When you are ready, it may be time to turn this situation around. Take a closer look at what is driving you to pick someone like her. Sometimes we are not ready to see why we chose the fixer, saver, giver role; why we chose people who need fixing; and why we risk repeating the same painful situation if we don't look at why.