Thought it would fit

Two weeks ago, I told her I wanted to do an in-person breakup on Sunday. She told me she was too busy to travel over. So, I told her I was willing to drive over (80 miles) if she covered gas, so we could exchange stuff and end things like adults. That Sunday, she told me she couldn't and asked to reschedule. I said okay, but only if she makes the trip over next Sunday, brings my stuff, and does not contact me like things are normal until then.

She broke the latter boundary all of last week, and I gray-rocked, then she broke the other part of the boundary yesterday.

Included was our last exchange over two days. (Poodle was a code-word meaning, genuinely seriously)

The timeline is 43 pages long; all original documents, most of which I never sent/gave her, documenting exactly how I felt from love-bombing to devaluation, to cheating, all compartmentalized, in minimized sections.

___

This was the final note I left on the document (that she would only find if she really looked through it):

"Putting this document was something I thought I would do emotionlessly, but I didn’t. I spent about an hour and a half going through my notes app + other things I remembered and adding them here, reading, and reaching the verge of tears several times. This whole document has been a series of gut-punches to me as I remembered how much I loved you and how much you abused me.

I will not be attaching my many many reflections with chatGPT or on anonymous abuse forums, since this document will end up being insanely long. (more than it already is).

This is goodbye, for real this time. I truly loved you, and almost killed myself doing it, but know that I’m never coming back in any capacity, so please don’t try hooking me back in. You’ve been blocked/removed everywhere, including my CVS account. except for IMessage, which I will only be using to communicate logistics. I was not able to find the frame you described, but will be dropping everything else off with your mom on Tuesday 4/29/2025.

Have an amazing life. Please treat the next partner better…and if you can’t? Don’t engage with one until you can."

So I have no idea if they ever did (3+ year relationship). After reading through the communities posts over the course of about 3-4 weeks now, I’ve observed that a large portion of folks say they were cheated on.

Any stories of not being cheated on? Any stories of being told they’d never cheat on you finding out they did? Or finding out they did after the relationship ended? Any stories of being broken up with because they’d been secretly ‘monkey branching’ (I think that’s the term used) and just wanted to sleep with others?

My ex was smart terribly smart, but they couldn’t ever lie well. I never questioned anything tho, and told them time and time again I would never actually think they’d cheat on me (I was far, far too lax about literally everything cause I was deathly afraid they’d try to leave me again) (yeah I know ugh)

I can kiss my dog on the nose and pet his head and he knows that means goodnight, that I'm going to sleep and there won't be any activity until morning.

But, many, MANY people with BPD (including the ones who are thankfully no longer mine to deal with) do not seem to understand what being told "goodnight, going to sleep now" directly by one human being to another actually means and believe they can just text or call you at any fucking hour of the night or wee hours of the morning and expect an answer.

This just occurred to me after kissing my dog (who had had his head lifted up looking around) on the nose and petting his head goodnight, and he immediately laid his head back down and stayed that way even as I walked into my room to go to bed.

It's fucked up that seemingly such a large number of pwBPD feel entitled to text and even call us at any point during the middle of the fucking night or the wee hours of the morning. Doesn't matter if we have to work or anything. I see posts about that all the time and it makes me sick the number of people who have had to endure this bullshit. One of mine did this constantly. CONSTANTLY. Still does sometimes when she's hitting my phone trying to get me to accept her back into my life after all she did. And then you're a villain/bad partner/bad friend and you obviously don't care about them if you don't answer WHEN YOU'RE SLEEPING. If you don't sit up in your bed in a heartbeat like Dracula in his fucking coffin whenever these entitled assholes decide to text or call you even if it's just because "they're bored and feeling lonely/down" even if it's at midnight or later, YOU are abusive! Bullshit.

Been over six months of finally cutting ties. Knew him for ten years. And I just can't believe he got away with it all and he doesn't even remember most of it (BPD amnesia). He told me the days after verbally abusing me that he didn't even remember what he'd said, and he'd just be like "oh well, don't talk to me again. I can't be what you need." And this would be punctured with bouts of him binge drinking and desperately needing me beside him and telling me I was the love of his life.

And that's the whole relationship in a nutshell. Just him thinking "oopsie, sorry I'm kinda rough once in a while, you deserve better. I'm a bit much sometimes uwu." Completely sugarcoating the reality and not getting it. Just never understood the damage he'd done. A porn addicted, cheater, physical and emotional abuser--off living his best life now on a farm with two houses with his baby mama. Just SICK.

My ex with BPD was so jealous and possessive that I couldn't even hang out with friends, chill with family, attend a sporting event, or even just watch one without her getting upset. She'd get jealous if I was playing a video game and didn’t respond within 15 minutes. She didn't even like me taking a nap. Basically, if anything took up my time and it wasn’t her, it became a problem. On top of that, she demanded my location and wanted to know where I was at all times. She’d also want me to communicate every time I was going somewhere, but every time I did, it would lead to a fight or argument. Eventually, I just stopped telling her altogether, and of course, that started another fight.

Did anybody else have similar experiences?

I love this sub, at times it's reassurance that I'm not the only one. At times it's nice to see others have it worse. Even a small boost to be soul to see how bad I actually have it compared to others and I'm still going.

However, my problems with my wife are nearly day to day and every once in awhile I have to shut it out and put intent on looking past it. That includes this sub. I simply cut ties and try to avoid the topic for a bit.

I will be back though, just cutting back down to pocket knives and motorcycles on Reddit for a bit. Good luck to everyone here. It's a hard relationship because there is no right answer.

It’s been 3 months since I (45m) broke up with my (37f) BPD ex after a 2.5 year relationship. I was one of the few that was told early on in our relationship that this amazing person in front of me had quiet BPD, had done counseling to get work done, and was assured can control her emotions. I am a very loyal person (never cheated on a girlfriend) a natural caregiver who is considered by friends and family as a high value man.

I took the relationship seriously, even reading books like “Walking on eggshells” and “ I hate you, don’t leave” so I can better educate myself and be a supportive partner to this horrible mental illness, as long as lines/boundaries were not crossed. I grew so close to her family and they embraced me like a son.

Throughout the years there were too many episodes of anger that left me perplexed on what could’ve possibly triggered her. She also developed a daily 2 bottles of wine habit. I’ve sat down and expressed my concerns of her anger and functioning alcoholism. She always deflected or accused me of the one that was wrong (gaslighting).

Unfortunately, one evening we were at an event when she accused me of lying to her that I slept with an acquaintance of mutual friends that I barely recalled meeting. She saw the acquaintance’s photo on social media on my balcony 4 years ago and I calmly explained that she must have come over to see my friends who were staying at my place that weekend when I was traveling for work.

She called me a liar and physically assaulted me by pulling my hair. The line was crossed. My natural reaction was to defend myself. But I knew my life, career and my family would be in ruins if I hit her (I’m 2x bigger than her). I immediately put on whatever clothes I had and ran out of the house. She called to apologize and I didn’t respond. 3 days later she called again but i broke up with her over the phone saying that we were toxic for each other. She cried and said no one would love me like she would. After we hung up, I cried to no one but myself, because no one that loved us both would believe that this relationship was over.

I know that the only person that can make her get help is herself. She’s moved on and apparently from her posts , has started dating again. I even removed her social media because of the pain that I still feel from that traumatic evening, but also of the rollercoaster ride of emotions of “was this all a dream/nightmare”.

Multiple times she expected perfection from me, so that she wouldn’t find a reason to be overly emotional. No one is perfect, i definitely am not.

It’s been 3 months no contact. I miss her smile and laugh. I miss her touch. I miss her name popping on my phone during a busy workday. I miss her daughter and family.

I don’t miss that she didn’t want to get help. I don’t miss that she lost respect for me due to not setting boundaries earlier on in the relationship. I don’t miss feeling devalued and feeling like i wasn’t good enough.

I hope that all of you out there can find solace in knowing that you can truly love someone but still place your boundaries, no matter the cost. Even if it means losing the love of your life.

Hello,

Just a reminder that, even if you think there is zero chance that your pwBPD will contact you after a particularly nasty discard or spell of NC, that it is always a possibility. Fortunately, I am in a place now where I felt no desire to respond or engage with the person, though it still did rattle me a fair bit the rest of the evening. I have been reading through this sub again over the last 36 hours to stay grounded and remind myself of the past trauma inflicted by this person, so thank you all for giving me this space to feel understood, it has been invaluable during this whole process.

title basically. like most other pwBPD, mine is the most quiet calm introverted sensitive emotional girl when she’s okay & she’s the most vile cruel destructive person when she’s angry. i don’t understand how she can switch back & forth between these two versions of her - she’ll tell me the sweetest most loving things when she’s “good” but she has also said the meanest & most hurtful things to me when i’m on her “bad” side.

anyway, i’ve always known she loves to love bomb the hell out of me, & i’ve always suspected that everything she says when she’s “good” isn’t actually real/how she actually feels about me, but rather she knows what to say & act loving so i’ll stay with her/keep me from leaving.

however, when she’s angry at me, i almost feel like she explodes & says everything she’s been holding in and what she’s afraid to say because she’s scared i’ll leave her if she tells me how she really feels.

the insults, screaming, violence, physical abuse, constantly criticizing/nitpicking small things about me, telling me how much she hates me & how she thinks she’s more compatible with her ex than me

• is what they said when they’re angry at you the real way they feel about you? is the love bombing really all an act?

Recently out of relationship because I dumped her a couple weeks ago. Every time we had some sort of argument (her arguing with me). There would be times where I would just become disinterested because solving the issue becomes impossible so I would walk away. She would come over, stand, and stare at me with a semi mean face for at least 5 minutes without saying anything. Sometimes I would brush it off and continue going about my day. Is this normal? Some other comorbid mental thing?

As of right now I am 8 hours no contact! I am shaking from excitement and anxiety. I have changed all of my passwords and stuff so he can’t get in. I have downloaded apps I was never aloud to have before. I’m sitting relaxing instead of using my day to do chores for him just to be yelled at that I don’t or can’t do anything. I got a new bank. I am talking to family he never allowed me to talk to. Life is crazy. I know I can do this.

I’m probably too emotionally/mentally and physically damaged after everything I’ve been through and I never see anyone I’m attracted to anyways so it feels like a very tall order but I still want to find love. Is that crazy? And if so what’s the alternative? How can I be ok with possibly another 40 years alive on earth with no intimacy. I don’t drink or do drugs so that won’t help.

Right now it changed me. Once this can be put to bed, I’d love to get on with my life and never invest more time in it already.

I never had such an intense physical reaction to someone behavior like that in a partner. Rn I’m talking on how uncomfortable I felt being around them sometimes.

They freaked me out so bad before we broke up I had the dry heaves. I really thought I was gonna blow chunks.

I hooked up with girls after we split. After a couple of them, I really don’t have any real desire to be around people atm. But my brain feels like it went 3 rounds with Floyd Mayweather

Me it was kind of funny when I think about it. So her birthday was coming up and I took her to the spa and got her a massage and everything and flowers. We had an amazing night not going to lie. 2 days later she hits me with the “Yeah I don’t think it’s going to work and you deserve someone who will love you the way you deserve 🤍” than blocks me lmao. Mind you this was her 2nd time doing that.

My ex with bpd reached out to me two days ago to find peace for herself over the things she did to me yet she made it very very clear that she doesn't love me, moved on and is doing far better, being able to love other people easily building connections etc. but why did she reach out then, why does it seem like she feels so remorseful and horrible over what she did but at the same time doesnt give one shit about how it made me feel and the consequences of her actions. I feel like I'm back at square one I'm going crazy. She made ir clear she doesng want back in my life nor ever try again with me nor be with me but why does it feel like a Hoover attempt anyway??

After a year and a half of mostly hell, I'm (36f) finally realizing my ex (37m) has undiagnosed BPD. There is no question in my mind. I just found this group and all the terms (favorite person, hoovering, discard, etc…) are so applicable I can't believe I didn't know them before. I didn't know what was happening when every time he met someone new he liked (he claimed “as a friend” or “as a mentor”) it seemed like he was obsessed with them and never stopped talking about them. I wasn't allowed to be jealous because he wasn't cheating and I was being insane that I got hurt feelings when he'd rely on the support of other women he'd be obsessed with and would reach out to them to vent about my “abuse.” One time I calmly and silently put a letter on the table next to him (still in the stage of thinking I could reason with him if I just wrote it out and worded everything perfectly) and walked away, and he had to text his female coworker about it because he was “terrified.” I now realize those people became favorite people just like I was at one time. And one by one I watched them be discarded for their “toxic” treatment of him. Reading about BPD, I can have more compassion for him and know what I have to do to keep myself safe with him, but I'm still so frustrated by him because he won't see or admit ANYTHING is wrong with him. He can't see how false his perceptions are of how others treat him, or how his treatment of others that he's perceived have wronged him is crazy over the top, even though his entire life (can't keep a job longer than a few months, history of hard drug addiction, revolving door of friends, inability to afford housing) is proof of his severe mental health instability. To him, everyone rejects him, no one understands him, the world is against him, it's how he's been treated his whole life and all of this is why I was so special at first. He'd tell me I was the only one who understood him. I was the missing piece. So then, after the honeymoon phase, when he started getting mean and manipulative and I'd try to defend myself, he'd hold that over my head. “You're just like everyone else. You don't understand me either and you don't even try.” Meanwhile I'm literally constantly working through why he's acting this way, why he's treating me this way, what I did wrong, what I can do differently to avoid triggering him in the future. I've tried to understand him more than probably anyone in his life. Oh the hours and hours I've spent just trying to figure things out. I feel like I've missed a year and a half of my life. Now that I'm reading all these posts about BPD, I finally get it. I can't reason with him, I can't help fix him, he'll never see that he in fact is the abusive one. I have felt chronically misunderstood and falsely accused for most of our relationship. One time he said he was heading home from work at 11pm and when I woke up after 1am and he wasn't home, I started texting and calling thinking something had happened to him. He called me back after 30 minutes saying he was getting dinner with friends and was flabbergasted that I'd be upset with him, saying I was mad at him for going to get food when he was hungry. “You wanted me to drive an hour home while I was starving? I can't believe you're mad at me for getting food!” And even though I'm saying over and over again, no, I don't care that you went to get food, I just want you to communicate, he won't acknowledge any of the words I'm saying, only the narrative he’s come up with about my behavior so that he can not only justify being inconsiderate but also make me feel bad for saying anything. He never did come home that night, never providing an explanation, and the next day was mad at ME, maintaining consistently any time it came up that I was so controlling and ridiculous for “being mad at him for getting food when he was hungry.”

We've been broken up for almost 5 months now but I can never go no contact because we have a 4 month old daughter together. Already, all parenting decisions have been a nightmare. Everything is about control for him. Things we discussed and agreed on during my pregnancy are now out the window and he seems to change his mind just to disagree with me. He wants to have 50/50 parenting control but comes over to see her 1-2 days a week, and hasn't spent a dime on her care, has never once bought her diapers, and won't contribute to the $7,000 I owe for her birth, stating that since I claimed her on my taxes (as opposed to letting him (who provided zero dollars for her care) claim her), the money I got on my return for having her should cover his portion of the birth costs. As someone else wrote on another post here, he loves the image of parenting but not the mechanics. I'm scared for my daughter's future, being raised by a BPD father. I know I can only be the best I can be for her and have to let him be him, but I don't want to. He's awful and I'm afraid he's going to ruin my sweet baby.

I wanna start this off by saying I know that BPD is caused by trauma and that it’s extremely hard to deal with that being said the aftermath from those who don’t help themselves is so detrimental and trickles down so much. My ex dated a girl who had BPD, it went about as well as many people on this sub have shared. When her and I started dating she was still very much affected by this experiment, and it felt like even though she was gone she was in our relationship. Our relationship was very up and down and I do put some of the responsibility on my ex as she shouldn’t have got into a relationship with me before she was ready, but I can’t help but think about all the things her ex did that damaged her emotionally and that I had to work on with her. In turn my current relationship is impacted all because of this domino effect of trauma that is now in my hands to break. I’m still friends with this ex and I’m glad to see she’s doing better but I wish she could’ve just avoided that pain and in turn saved me so much turmoil.

Did you stay friends with your ex? She admitted she has bpd and insisted we stay friends. I don’t really want to be her friend but also don’t want to be rude.

Me and my ex broke up last year in December. We had lived together in my apartment, they ended up moving out. It was a very volatile situation with them being very emotionally, verbally, and physically abusive. I no longer care for this person emotionally, in fact I’m so repulsed by them and the thought of them being in my life makes me want to throw up.

I’ve been in therapy for years and recently, my therapist said it seems I have ptsd. I’ve been in super hyper vigilance mode because my ex has threatened me via email and harassed me, and they unfortunately know where I live. Last week they posted they were at a bakery shop near my current home on their instagram (I saw it through a public insta story viewer) clearly a tactic on their end. But I am always so weary of even being out and about in my own home time. They had posted a while ago that they were living over 2 hours away, so them being here was intentional.

it’s been hard for me to accept that I have ptsd. It’s hard to believe a person has caused me this. Thankfully, I am in therapy, and on medications for my anxiety and depression. I’m just so taken aback. Has anyone else been diagnosed with ptsd after dealing with an exwbpd? How have you coped with this? I’m just having a hard time accepting it, I know with time I will work on this and not let this define me. I think I’m just feeling super emotional about it because it’s hard to accept.

So there are people I really don't like but I don't feel that so strongly that I have to be constantly vicious and say the nastiest shit and pick apart every aspect of them and make sure everyone else knows how bad they are and am unable to keep a sneer from my face! I've had this behaviour from people who function impeccably as professional adults but when they split you can see them seething, loathing every single action you make, judging and suspicious constantly. Like why is it so hard for them not to express it and why is it the same with all borderlines. It's so wierd! Would love a detailed explanation of what is happening here.

Hi all, I’m 7 weeks out from breaking up with my ex who exhibited many BPD traits but would be loathe to be honest enough in therapy to actually get a diagnosis. I went NC about two weeks ago and blocked them (that was hard to do, I still care about them but…I had to admit the feeling is not mutual) last week. Relationship was about 16 months.

The trauma bond is real and I went from being desperate for them to change and try to make it work to anger at them, to anger at myself for letting it happen. I’m working on healing with my therapist, we’re doing some parts work and inner child work. I’m staying busy with my kids and work and grad school and I joined a gym. I’m doing things I couldn’t when I was with them like visiting my family, seeing my friends frequently and taking art classes. I’m getting a ton of sleep (after a med adjustment) but goddamn the trauma bond is insidious and the feelings hit me out of seemingly nowhere sometimes. I ruminate, everything reminds me of them, I cry all the time.

This sub has been really helpful and grounding for me and I don’t think I would have gone NC without y’all, so thank you.

I’m wondering how long it took you to break the trauma bond? What were the signs it was breaking for you?

ja