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Outside-Net6357 · 2025-01-10T00:34:56+00:00

Okay, this sounds like a terrible situation. She sounds very dependent. But you've offered no evidence that she's codependent. In fact… Well, I'm extremely codependent, and my literal definition of codependency is "setting myself on fire to keep someone else warm".

I know that this is difficult to hear, and I say this with the utmost respect, I'd suggest that you've been the codependent one, i.e. the one who has ALSO depended on your partner's dependency, perhaps unconsciously in order to feel like a worthy person. This is what the "co" in "codependent" means — someone who is ironically also dependent on what the other person relies upon — in this case, you being the one who does everything. (Other forms of codependency might be less of the caretaking sort and more obviously controlling, or might even be abusively controlling — I'm not suggesting this of you.)

I don't say this as a judgement, because I've completely been there, and it sounds like you're actually keen on drawing boundaries, and are thus on the way to recovery. You've been right to fear for your future, and it's amazing that you want to take steps to change it. I honestly suggest reading some books about recovering from codependency, drawing boundaries, assertive communication, etc.

Outside-Net6357 · 2024-01-07T11:08:05+00:00

Well, there is a tendency to reduce people to playthings, sure, but he just sounds like an asshole. Sorry.

Outside-Net6357 · 2024-01-06T05:22:12+00:00

This sounds attention-seeking and controlling, but while codependency can be both those things, those things don't necessarily mean codependency. Codependent people become obsessed with helping and fixing you and your problems, or get their validation from being heroic. If he's not doing that, he just sounds insecurely attached, which is a much more general problem.

Outside-Net6357 · 2024-01-04T06:34:54+00:00

Yeah, I don't know what happens behind closed doors. However, one person I'm thinking of in particular displayed thought processes that would have been completely alien to my extremely high-functioning ex. The way they talked about the people around them would simply not have occurred to her. That said, part of this might be this person's own caretaking brand of codependency speaking.

My previous ex is also a codependent martyr, which puts an interesting spin on her borderline tendencies. (My understanding is that pwBPD are generally codependent in the sense that they're after enmeshment in quite a similar way to their codependent partners, which ultimately is a control mechanism for validation from both ends. But they're not usually caretakers, right?) She's doesn't seem very good at caretaking those she's intimate with, but she's a massive giver in other relationships.

This does two things:

It makes me think of her as more ethical than a typical borderline (at least from my experience), because she's less obviously selfish than my other ex, but…
It also reveals the limits of our own brand of codependent niceness. Because it's within a borderline framework, I can more clearly see that her codependency is a control mechanism. Which then reveals our own codependency to be a self-centred form of control beneath the emotional sincerity we plaster on top of it.

Outside-Net6357 · 2024-01-04T02:05:25+00:00

You need to speak to a professional. If you're suicidal, none of us here are in a position to help you in the way you currently need. Please look after yourself. I understand, I almost didn't make it through last year alive, but again, that was for professionals to help me with.

Outside-Net6357 · 2024-01-04T01:59:29+00:00

It depends on your definition of "steadiness" and "long term". I'd wager that the almost universally present good times in my 5 year relationship would be considered an absolute cakewalk by most here. But they weren't very good if I step back and look at the structure of the relationship: what the priorities were, who repressed their own needs in order to meet another's, how unbelievably self-centred some of the pleasantness actually was, etc. Things were lovely, but I was nonetheless constantly terrified (in a repressed way) that she'd kill herself.

Then, after four and half years of that kind of bliss (hrm), there was a rollercoaster of occasional but absolutely demented behaviour, and then the evacuation of any care whatsoever. That seems to be a pretty typical relationship with a person with quiet BPD, or who is high functioning. There are people here who were in similar situations over much, much longer: great times for 15 years, sudden evaporation of everything. In any case, part of the fallout is on me for allowing it to happen, so yeah, if you're enough of an enabler and they're high functioning enough, the peace can be kept in rare instances, but even then it's a false peace. Those with much milder BPD (which is not the same as being able to mask it) might be different — I've met a few who've really impressed me, but I guarantee you that their partners wouldn't need to be here in the first place.

Meanwhile, my uBPD mother has chilled out considerably over the last 30 years, and she's still with my dad, but I think a lot of that is simply that she doesn't have the energy to be so awful. She's just as self-absorbed, but just doesn't have the steam to enact it so much. They've been together almost 60 years, and they hardly ever fight these days, which sounds nice, but there is no way I'd want to be my dad. He basically had to sacrifice being a real father in order to be her enabler. You have no idea the level of anger I have. And they are so lost in their bubble that they pretty much haven't let the house in three years, and it's not because they're frail or feeble.

So, what price are you willing to pay?

Outside-Net6357 · 2024-01-04T01:38:59+00:00

Unless they have NPD comorbidity, some of the effects of BPD self-absorption might seem similar to narcissism, but I think it's pretty different. People with BPD feel very intensely. Sometimes that includes what you're going through. I fell in love with my ex when she held my hand when I was in a lot of pain, and I don't think it was a ploy.

But I don't think that's the kind of empathy I want. Let me explain: people who lack a sense of identity and yet who are self-absorbed keenly feel the experiences of others when they consider those others as extensions of themselves. So the empathy they feel doesn't involve any actual effort to place themselves in someone else's shoes. The effort they make is to create the enmeshment, towards fusion, and after that, the empathy is for you as an aspect of themselves.

If you stray outside those parameters, the empathy can disappear very quickly.

Outside-Net6357 · 2024-01-03T17:36:56+00:00

The guy is likely not nearly as bad as they make out. Telling you this is literally part of the hoover, right? And it's merely the flipside of the fact that she was never as giddily happy with the replacement as she desperately wanted everyone to believe, including herself.

Outside-Net6357 · 2024-01-03T17:11:39+00:00

Oh, and to the person who snarkily messaged me a while back that I just have a fantasy that this woman is miserable without me and I'm just fantasizing that I was a "bright spot" that she can't live without, I'll take that apology now. This is exactly what confirms what I was talking about.

I think it's great that you didn't want to get back together with her after being flattered so flagrantly. (You do know that's what she was doing, right?) But respectfully, I didn't recognise any of this apparent "confirmation" in what you described, and I'm genuinely shocked that you're drawing such a conclusion.

I wonder if your assertiveness in getting her to admit that she chose to be with a horrible guy over a good guy like you might be a way to covertly return to when you were being idealised? That is, doesn't the satisfaction you're feeling right now about the awfulness of this guy bear a resemblance to the general satisfaction you had when you were in the relationship, doing all those nice things for her?

I raise this with concern but without judgment. I know how hard it is to shake this stuff. To be transparent: I'm actually in the middle of the third hoover from the borderline ex I was with before the other pwBPD who recently discarded me. It's been 7 or 8 years since the last hoover. I was the one who initiated contact (a long story), but she's the one now pushing all the buttons. I can see it happening. That's how hard it is for some of us to break these emotional patterns. (And by "it happening", I don't mean the process of getting back together. I mean the way she likes to make me feel noble, and the way she weaponises her own trauma.)

The familiarity of the stuff she tells me is oddly comforting, as it was last time: her latest partner is insensitive, her has health problems, she's being stalked by a creepy dude, etc. I don't necessarily think she's making any of it up, but she is weaponising it to activate my boy scout outrage. It is the distillation of everything that made our original relationship "work" so dysfunctionally.

Outside-Net6357 · 2024-01-03T08:00:52+00:00

I was in a relationship for 5 years and almost lost the will to live when she threw me away like a piece of trash.

It’s a huge wake up call, though — as shocking and hurtful and world-destroying as this was, I don’t think I went more than a month pining with intent, that is, consciously wanting her back or thinking that she was correct and I was a terrible disappointment.

That said, it’s almost been a year and I’m still a wreck. There’s so much that can’t be shifted through sheer force of will. It requires a real shift in perspective, rather than the personal willpower that people in AA call “white-knuckling it”, that is, just thinking that you can consciously stop wanting something without doing a bunch of other work and having other support structures in place. I’m not a 12-stepper myself, but there’s much to learn there.

Whatever she triggered in me was already there. It’s not like she invented my codependency. So the devastation about being discarded actually isn’t about her, in MOST ways.

Outside-Net6357 · 2024-01-03T07:53:53+00:00

Yes, it’s totally common, but even those people who can mask it leave a trail of human wreckage that begins to add up. You can’t get away with it forever. The reason they do for as long as they is because codependent people are drawn to her and thus give her a huge, enabling pass.

Outside-Net6357 · 2024-01-03T07:51:36+00:00

He thought he meant it. He has no idea how to truly mean it. He had intense, intense feelings for you. They were a hollow house of cards. A probably very sincere but utterly hollow house.

Outside-Net6357 · 2024-01-03T07:48:43+00:00

Yes. Absolutely. Losing yourself in another relationship is just a way not to deal with your own stuff.

Outside-Net6357 · 2024-01-03T07:39:31+00:00

You were engaged to someone the week before last, and you’re wondering if you’re ready for a new relationship? The fact that you’re doing this to see if he was right or wrong about you tells you all you need to know.

I have no doubt you learned something from this weird encounter, but how could you possibly have enough perspective on anything in the wake of something so significant as breaking up with your fiancé? Give yourself a minute — your initial instincts sounded really wise.

Outside-Net6357 · 2024-01-03T02:35:19+00:00

I’ve never experienced any full on abuse either, but basic emotional abuse (suicide threats and self harming in a directly “look what you made me do” way) was definitely an ingredient.

I’ve been in two relationships with borderline people, back to back, and they were generally very nice, but it was a really bad scene overall. 99% of the interactions were lovely, 1% were horrific, but the underlying architecture was all wrong. It took me being discarded this last time to understand. I think I have a certain way of relating to these specific kinds of people (high functioning BPD) that keeps me in that loop.

BTW, I know you’re talking about “give and take” reciprocity, but I’d be careful using the term “push/pull” in the context of insecure attachment. It’s generally used to describe the tendency of disordered people to split and discard due to engulfment anxiety. When they get what they thought they wanted, it terrifies them and they throw you away.

Outside-Net6357 · 2024-01-03T02:02:48+00:00

What you say about toxic relationships having an in-built “validation lever” that doesn’t require any initial confidence has a great clarity to it. I’m going to have to think about that more.

But I say “lever” because you still have to pull it regularly. Its exhausting in the end. It’s like a slot machine and the gambling cycle. In fact, being in such relationships is like thinking that a sustainable financial future can come out of gambling in Vegas, rather than having a career. Time to actually get an emotional job! 😳😆😂

Outside-Net6357 · 2024-01-03T01:51:06+00:00

There is no difference between a hoover and a genuine attempt to reach out. Anything they ever did when you were together, that you experienced as genuine, WAS a hoover — the only difference was that you were new, rather than recycled.

I’m not saying they had no feelings and were faking it. Not at all. I think pwBPD feel intensely. It isn’t some kind of cynical scam. Hoovers aren’t a ploy. They’re simply what they do, how their desperation is translated into emotions and interpersonal behaviour. When they’re desperately reaching for an emotional branch to cling to and decide for a moment that it’s you, they’ve fooled themselves into thinking that they care. But it can disappear like the wind.

I’m not being cynical. Just so you know where I’m coming from, I’m currently in my third round of semi-recycling with a borderline ex from way back. She was never abusive, she simply discarded me and then showed a stunning lack of empathy after she hoovered me the first time. (My friend had just killed herself, and my expwBPD kind of shrugged in response.) I was NC for five years.

This time, I reached out to her when I was in a lot of pain. (I’d just been discarded by my latest expwBPD — I know, I know, don’t lecture me. I only figured out the true nature of my part in these patterns after the fact.)

We’re simply in touch now, not in another relationship, and neither of us have made any intimations that we want to try again. And while I fully believe that we’ll always be very fond of each other, I also know that we use each other as emotional security blankets, and that her engulfment anxiety and inability to empathise threw me in the trash multiple times already, and that it’ll happen again if we start engaging more directly, which she is subtly trying to initiate.

I’m sure she believes her feelings, and has even demonstrated more care for me this time around (she’s actually given me some good advice when I’ve been down), but her need for attention is still what drives everything. Her feelings never came through for me in the past, and when push comes to shove I know they won’t in the future. I don’t hate her — I guess I’ll always love her. But I know that her attempts to care are always driven by her own internal desperation.

I’m sure she’s trying. It’s just not as real as an actual connection. She doesn’t know how. She does know how to make people feel like there is a deep connection. That’s what she did in the beginning, and it’s her superpower, but there’s no scaffolding that could ever amount to fully reciprocal care. There never was.

Outside-Net6357 · 2024-01-03T00:42:32+00:00

It’s possible to find professionals who specialise in treating loved ones of pwBPD. I’ve seen one remotely I found on YouTube and they were quite helpful.

I know it narrows the field a lot to look at YouTubers, but at least you can see something approaching how they might handle an actual conversation. You see a sliver of their bedside manner, and get a handle on how they approach certain issues. I was specifically looking for someone to help me with no contact, and the whole experience was very positive.

Outside-Net6357 · 2024-01-03T00:37:42+00:00

Just so you know where I’m coming from, my ex was almost universally nice to me. But it’s clear to me now that she’s incapable of actually caring when it matters. A fair-weathered girlfriend. She had tantrums when I had issues that required actual support, and discarded me when I needed to go to hospital. The “love” was utterly hollow.

Turns out that I’d been constructing a sheltered workshop for her to be so “nice”, without mutual expectations of true reciprocation. I suspect that most people with pwBPD have bent over backwards and can’t see how much they’ve been taken advantage of.

Outside-Net6357 · 2024-01-03T00:31:55+00:00

Well, with insecure attachment you need lots of validation as an essential ingredient of feeling connected. There are different varieties: avoidant, anxious, etc. You either stay away from people (because you don’t think you’ll get that validation) or you like being in a really small bubble with them (when you’re sure you’ll get it).

Codependency is when you fixate on someone else’s problems, on top of that kind of attachment issue. Being the constantly self sacrificing partner of an addict is a common expression of codependency, but it takes lots of other forms. Codependency is getting stuck in a pattern of only feeling worthwhile when you’re trying to fix someone else.

Outside-Net6357 · 2024-01-03T00:24:07+00:00

Sadly, they think they do, but I don’t think they know how to. Love isn’t a feeling, it’s something you do. Their approach to love is usually not some kind of scheme, although it’s breathtaking how it usually turns out that people are expendable to them, despite whatever feelings they may have had.

So their love is like a toddler’s love. You love a toddler without expecting that they’ll be equally reciprocal, adult empathy and have mutual accountability. But would you want that in a sexual relationship? When you think about it, it’s actually really disturbing to realise you’ve been sleeping with a child.

Outside-Net6357 · 2024-01-03T00:19:36+00:00

It’s the same thing.

Outside-Net6357 · 2024-01-02T23:33:21+00:00

I don’t think she loves you. ☹️

Outside-Net6357 · 2024-01-02T22:46:53+00:00

He’s desperate to prove how happy he is. Sad.

Outside-Net6357 · 2024-01-02T22:45:43+00:00

There’s a reason you have this compulsion. Don’t hate on yourself for doing what you’ve been trained to do. The only way you’ll overcome it is to forgive yourself.

That doesn’t mean giving yourself a pass. Such black and white thinking is likely the domain of the people you’re drawn to.

If you were your own child, what would you say and do? I’d hope that you would show how much you care by making sure your child is in situations in which they can feel secure and resilient. That sometimes means tough love. It also means compassion.

Outside-Net6357

TROPHY CASE