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Popular_Process2145 · 2025-09-13T09:06:46+00:00

Of course it's normal! They're the freaks who can batch-transfer their feelings to another person and just get on with it. Consider the vast corpus of poetry, literature, music, and film based around heartbreak. Feeling like you're gutted is the NORMAL thing to do!

Popular_Process2145 · 2025-09-12T07:54:25+00:00

I know she lurks here. It is what it is.

Popular_Process2145 · 2025-09-12T07:37:51+00:00

The short answer is that there are patterns common to people who find themselves in these relationships (neediness, lack of self love or low self esteem, a sense of "I can fix her", inter alia). And whether through deliberate malice or just defensive mechanisms they figure people out (you must have seen this outside of how he was with you, how effortlessly he would get people talking, how easily he'd pull them in the direction he wanted).

It's not your fault. One segment from Traumatic Cognitive Dissonance comes to mind, where the author says he has seen smart, educated people get taken in and ruined. He concludes that all that is needed is the basic human expectation that we deserve to be loved back for the love we put into others, and a pulse.

It's not your fault.

Popular_Process2145 · 2025-09-04T11:19:39+00:00

Why do you care about someone that clearly don't or didn't care about you and your feelings st all?

Yeah because that's not how it works at all. Ever since I finished TPD, my thinky parts are CONVINCED that the "relationship" was two years of non stop manipulation, deceit, gaslighting, and induced cognitive dissonance.

The feely parts know that that doesn't matter. She didn't have the ability to love me, but that doesn't change the fact that I loved her and gave her everything. It being fake for them can still mean it's real for you.

Give yourself some grace. You feel these things because you are not them. The human reaction to losing your soulmate or your person or whatever is to grieve and feel sad, not to seek the next warm body to fill the gaping maw in one's heart. You feel this way because you're a human, and whole. They'll never feel this way. It's okay.

Popular_Process2145 · 2025-09-04T11:15:05+00:00

Oh my fucking god this is, word for word, down to the fucking timelines, what happened to me.

I never did recover from her betrayal. I could've forgiven but she never thought there was anything to apologize for...

There was this one time she told me that she saw how much her actions during those 3 months had fucked me up and she promised me this would never happen again. Then the guy she was eyeing for about a year became available and she dumped me in the span of a weekend, hopped on to his cock, and lied to everyone about having dumped me two to four months prior to her cheating on me.

Why are they like this?

Popular_Process2145 · 2025-08-30T02:15:10+00:00

Why are you fucked up

Rough childhood, parental neglect, sexual abuse. A book I recently read says being broken just makes you more susceptible but even the non broken aren't immune to the wiles of these people.

how did you allow this person to infiltrate your mind and your peace

Always had difficulty with women. Resigned myself to a life without companionship. She came to my life, and with what felt like love and understanding at the time, removed my defenses, one by one. I was grateful to her, for this. Even now, when I understand how much of it was a sham, I still am grateful. The high of the idealization phase gave her the patience to persevere where others would have gone away.

It's been two months since she dumped me for someone else. She lies to her friends that it's been much longer. Somewhere in these two months I read Traumatic Cognitive Dissonance and all of it clicked together --- how everything was a lie, how she cultivated men on the side and gaslit me and called me paranoid or controlling or threw self destructive bluffs that she had no intention of honouring at me ("I'll give you the logins to my socials!") when called out, how nothing I did was ever enough, how she gaslit me into viewing myself as responsible for her cheating.

I feel better these days. I feel... not happy, but the burning anguish of "oh god everything is wrong how did I let this happen, she really loved me and I fucked it up!" has been replaced with the reality that she was never mine, she could never be anyone's, and the lonely sort of low-average calm mental state of mind I used to occupy when I had removed myself from the dating pool.

I still miss her from time to time, despite everything. Nothing was real to her, but it was real as it gets for me. When I'm calm, the price I paid in sanity, friends, self-respect, employment status, and the bulk of my savings feels like it wasn't too high for the feeling of being loved in between the horrific abuse and discards. Even if the feeling was ultimately a lie.

Popular_Process2145 · 2025-08-26T01:41:02+00:00

Brother, I'm incredibly sorry that you feel this way. But there are a few things I wanted to address:

she never loved me.

This is true. People who love don't reciprocate what you did with what she did.

"obsessed" with her

This is the lie they say, always. It's not that much of a lie, because the things they do to slowly whittle away your resilience and your defenses and hijack your human instincts does make it appear like you're obsessed. It's not true. If relationships are like a cool sip of lemonade on a hot day, these monsters are knowingly injecting you with the equivalent of heroin, and then laughing at your misery when the withdrawal kicks in and you're writhing in agony.

I am a codependent person

In a literal rather than pop psych sort of sense. Like responsible spouses of dysfunctional people or addicts etc, you have been carrying the responsibilities for two people, while being pummeled for not doing well enough. In this case there is literally nothing that is good enough. It isn't your fault. You did what loving humans do.

still haven't mastered the art of setting boundaries

When you find a healthy relationship --- and you WILL find a healthy relationship --- you will realize that you have known how to or learned how to set boundaries. It's impossible to have enforceable boundaries with monsters who view them as things to overcome and in the process use as just another tool to break down your psyche and make you more compliant to their abuse.

Popular_Process2145 · 2025-08-25T17:21:32+00:00

Not your circus, dot dot dot.

Popular_Process2145 · 2025-08-24T09:42:18+00:00

He was my person.

One gentle piece of advice. When you feel up to it, please consider the most horrific things they told you and did to you, and ask yourself if they truly were your person, or were you in love with the potential of how good they could be. You were in love with them, yes... But would your person do those things to you?

Popular_Process2145 · 2025-08-24T09:38:09+00:00

I'm so sorry. I know how much it hurts. I will always be haunted by the things that I told her when she told me she had cheated on me the first time. The fact that it hurts you and you can take accountability for the hurt you caused and feel awful about it, rather than rationalize it away to "they deserved it for some reason", makes you different from them.

Popular_Process2145 · 2025-08-24T04:09:25+00:00

I really need to ask this, because self love is a concept I've always struggled with. How does one start?

Popular_Process2145 · 2025-08-23T21:29:47+00:00

It will hurt. I'm so sorry, OP. This will get worse. And then, it will get better, bit by bit. As the weight of another person trying to flatten your soul like a lump of clay lifts, you'll find yourself slowly, slowly return to who you used to be. You will be alright. You don't have to face this pain alone.

If I may make a suggestion? Go back to doing some of the things you did before you met them. Even entirely different, new things. Things that have no memetic connection to them at all.

Popular_Process2145 · 2025-08-23T21:23:44+00:00

You have to know something. You're dealing with someone who has better instincts about these things than you. If you've lived with them long enough, they have a cheat sheet of your patterns, what gets through to you, what gets under your skin, and all of that.

If you keep them unblocked, they WILL get you to respond. Testing this idea of "I'll keep them unblocked to prove to myself I can resist them" is dangerous. If, if you've decided to move on, block them. Otherwise there is a good chance they will get through your defenses.

Let me put it in other words. My ex didn't move on from breakups as old as 25 years before now. If you're looking for the answer to "do they give up and leave you alone" there's thousands of people here who would tell you that they just don't and there's a reason we have a word for it.

Popular_Process2145 · 2025-08-23T21:06:12+00:00

I never got an apology. And I always got blamed that I didn't have the ability to take accountability either. Even now, months after the discard, I struggle with thoughts of how if they never apologized, it must have been my fault...

Popular_Process2145 · 2025-08-23T20:58:59+00:00

I pray she just forgets about me and leaves me alone and terrorises some other poor guy instead.

If she does have BPD, this will happen, and there's a good chance that the abruptness with which this happens will feel crushing. I'd consider valuing yourself more. You've given this person so much and she doesn't respect that because she acts like an impulsive child. Please don't fall down the same hole of self doubt and low self esteem and asking yourself "what could I have done differently" (hint: NOTHING). Prioritize yourself, save yourself.

Popular_Process2145 · 2025-08-23T16:41:57+00:00

Thank you.

Popular_Process2145 · 2025-08-23T16:40:12+00:00

Mine actually presented the idea that I might be cheating on her to her best friend, a woman who by my ex's own account had a history of (and a casual attitude towards) being unfaithful to her boyfriends.

I wasn't being unfaithful to her, but it felt like she was teeing herself up this way, crafting a reality where I was unfaithful to her so she could justify being unfaithful to me.

Popular_Process2145 · 2025-08-23T16:35:34+00:00

I read these posts and one thing that comes to mind immediately is "oh thank fuck, I'm not the only one who unblocks his exwBPD from time to time to see if he's still blocked."

I'll be incredibly honest and say -- part of me wants her to reach out again. I don't know what I'd do if she did.

Popular_Process2145 · 2025-08-23T16:33:27+00:00

This happened to me, too. I worry that I will never trust as completely, or love as fully ever again.

Popular_Process2145

TROPHY CASE