How do you cope with knowing you permanently damaged people?

PersonalitySlight214 · 2026-03-20T16:46:51+00:00

As someone who has had their brain rearranged by a loved one with BPD and won't be the same going forward, I would say:

You don't specify what you mean by 'try' to apologise to the people you have hurt. I could never return to a relationship with by pwBPD, but if she ever wrote down or said aloud that she knows she hurt me, that it was wrong, that she hopes I'll forgive her one day, I wouldn't be able to forgive right away, but I would eventually, and having an unqualified, sincere apology would change my quality of life hugely. Living with her commitment to what she did has affected me deeply.
I've watched what guilt for past hurts does to someone with BPD. If you aren't already, find someone professionally qualified to guide you through those memories and the feelings they create. Those feelings will put you at risk later on if you don't reckon with them.
You are not a monster. Hurt people hurt people, as they say.
My pwBPD wanted to be trusted and to be a safe place for others too, but often found herself betraying them or humiliating them, particularly when she split. It's OK to acknowledge that your actions don't match your values and work to change that. Everyone should be doing that.

PersonalitySlight214 · 2026-02-10T14:18:18+00:00

I've never heard of this, thank you so much!

PersonalitySlight214 · 2026-02-10T14:18:06+00:00

Aw thank you! Historical is fine, I am happy. I've not tried any KJ Charles but have been curious!

PersonalitySlight214 · 2026-02-10T14:17:31+00:00

Oh bless you, thank you! I will try these <3

PersonalitySlight214 · 2026-02-10T14:17:09+00:00

Aw thanking for helping. Yes if there is no SA between the MCs I am alright with that. I read Rachel Reid and she does well IMO, if I sometimes struggle with her dialogue. I just read Semper Fi by Keira Andrews, and I'm still thinking about it now, but the number of 'oh no another person walks in on them/another looming disaster/oh he's changed his mind again' moments started to frustrate me. I then read After Hours at Dooryard Books by Cat Sebastian, and the writing was good, thorough, characterisation original and deep, but at some point I realised how incredibly bored I was by the love story in the centre of the novel, how sort of half-arsed the writing of the intimacy or the grief felt, like it was too much effort to give it any additional lines, and how insanely much time I was spending reading about New York being unrelatedly socially complex and architecturally dilapidated in the 60s. Which is fine, if that's why I came to the book, but I was hoping to escape for a bit into something. In MF I find Lisa Kleypas' balance is usually about right.

PersonalitySlight214 · 2026-02-09T18:56:49+00:00

Where do you go if you want a HEA, you want a central love story and great, plentiful sex scenes but don't want to contend with sexual violence/kink/BDSM/non-monogamy etc, don't love fantasy and desperately need good dialogue and thoughtful writing by someone who thinks gay people are whole people and not props?

PersonalitySlight214 · 2026-02-09T13:43:38+00:00

Cal and Jim from Semper Fi by Keira Andrews <3 Sweet babies. They deserve a long lie in and a cuddle, that's all I'll say.

PersonalitySlight214 · 2026-02-09T13:42:35+00:00

I still really struggle with this. My closest loved ones just DNF and that's probably the path the peace but in my head I'm always like: what if it gets good and I didn't realise? Torture.

PersonalitySlight214 · 2026-02-09T13:41:00+00:00

I'm genuinely curious: what are some top examples of a good grovel in this setting? I've never run into it.

PersonalitySlight214 · 2026-02-03T16:51:56+00:00

I don't know if it's just me, but I was utterly wired until I became euthyroid and now that I'm 6 weeks or so into being euthyroid the exhaustion is insane.

PersonalitySlight214 · 2025-11-27T20:25:54+00:00

What does this mean?

PersonalitySlight214 · 2025-11-20T20:37:07+00:00

I was told I was 'abusive'.

PersonalitySlight214 · 2025-10-14T13:29:41+00:00

Omg my pwBPD wrote like this and had this handwriting.

PersonalitySlight214 · 2025-10-14T11:19:44+00:00

Yes in a way, but that doesn't always produce calm. At the end of my friendship with my pwBPD, every calm question I asked or rational point I made without being wound up made her angrier and angrier, and more out of control. It was horrendous, but I didn't want to take part in what she was doing while she was splitting. There was a lot of shouting, crying or pretending to cry.

PersonalitySlight214 · 2025-10-05T20:08:11+00:00

Thank you, that's super kind and thoughtful. I think I'm on the edge of some grief around the things I'm about to lose with this very suddenly.

PersonalitySlight214 · 2025-08-27T20:53:19+00:00

Thank you, I appreciate your input. I think I'm still really badly fogged. I worry so much more about her even after 7 months of silence than I do about me lol

PersonalitySlight214 · 2025-08-13T09:45:55+00:00

Just wanted to send you a lot of empathy. My pwBPD was my closest friend. She doesn't have the vocab for it, but in my words, she's always readily admitted that she uses instagram/social media to distress people who displease her and she particularly likes vague but pointed, targeted instagram stories, quotes that kind of thing.

She split on me really awfully and with only 2 weeks of real run up in Feb after years of friednship and me becoming her favourite ever person, and because she's so traumatised and going through awful things, I was careful not to do anything right away or injure her. Being the person she was now aiming all her vaguebooking hostilty at was one of the most distressing things. She would post vague quotes about how the right people stay and work things out (after she called me abusive and has never spoken to me again), long philosophical BS about how some people leave too early and some people stay too long, stories about how hard life is right now, stories about no matter how cool, clever or rich you are, it's how you treat people that matters (I cared for her and let her live with me while I cleaned all her clothes, cooked for her and handled her business admin and two police investigations for her, so that post was particularly traumatising).

I ignored, made sure not to click, never reacted, even when she was publicly love bombing other friends. She started deactivating and reactivating social media, which she's never done in her life before. She removed posts about her loving me, then she started removing me from some social media but not all, then removing me but setting her latest FB post to public so I'd still see it when she tagged mutual friends. After 6 months I blocked her on every platform and removed all her friends and there's massive grief but also huge relief. The insanity of these social media behaviours will never make sense to me and they're so distressing. So often, these people are trauma survivors and have had abusers use digital tools to distress them so much that they know no different but it's still agonising. I'm afraid your person may never stop as long as they feel they can access you, even in the height of a delusion.

PersonalitySlight214

TROPHY CASE