Carrot On A Stick

This has been truly the worst 2 years of my entire life. Especially this last year. I'm starting to see a little light at the end of the tunnel, but I still have a long way to go.

I think the hardest thing for me to deal with is acceptance. I haven't even seen my ex in almost a year, (she moved away) yet she still hoovers me. Nothing serious, but if I want I can keep my foot in the door as one of her little playthings if I play by her rules, which I refuse to do. There really is no other way to describe it. I realize now that I never had a chance in the situation. I projected the fantasy of what I've always wanted into a dysfunctional relationship/person.

Being involved with a BPD is a classic example of "Carrot on a Stick". Meaning they always keep the illusion of joy and absolute love and harmony just out of reach. There is always something holding it up. Some excuse, no matter how bizarre, that is putting an electric fence in front of our ideal relationship. Understanding that the fence is BPD, and that BPD and the wonderful person you love and cherish are the same person, is when you can truly begin to heal. I'm blocked from the woman I loved by a fence with barbed wire, electricity, and a host of other defensive mechanism traps. The codependent in me is telling me "She needs me. I can save her.", so I try and climb the fence to rescue her. It always ends up the same way. I get violently shocked and emotionally injured. You'd think I would learn not to try and climb the fence.

It's very hard to give up on the people we love. I'm wired exactly like my mother, and I wish I wasn't. She "stayed" in a relationship with an abusive BPD (My father) and now that he's gone, she doesn't know what to do with her life. She was completely enmeshed with an abuser, who even at the end of his life when he was lost in morphine, was choking and hitting her. It was the most horrific scene I've ever witnessed in my life. My abusive father, dying and emaciated, lost in some memory from the past beating my mother as she's screaming.

Granted he improved when he quit drinking, but just because the physical abuse stopped, doesn't mean the emotional and verbal abuse got any better. It didn't. I don't have any negative feelings against my mother, but damn I wish she would have got us out of that situation early in my life. It has crippled me emotionally to where I can barely function now. It's been so hard to overcome. I've tried to mask it by going to the gym like a madman most of my adult life to build a solid exterior, but inside, I still feel like that cowering child waiting for the beatings. I realize now that BPD/Codependents are cut from the same mold. It's why we get involved in these dysfunctional dances. I could have very well ended up BPD myself, except my mother was an all engulfing co dependent who smothered me and tried to protect me, so I adopted her ways through childhood idealization. It's all unconscious. You don't do this purposely, it just becomes who you are as you experience life I suppose.

I have to stop thinking I'd be happy if only my exbpdgf wasn't severely mentally ill. Nobody can make me happy except myself. I have to learn to love myself. I wish my childhood and lifetime of abuse hadn't made that possibility feel like climbing Mount Everest.

The Best Article I've Read on Borderline Personality Disorder

This is a very long, but extremely insightful article on BPD

Creepy Video

Not BPD related, but it raises questions on reality and mental illness.

What would cause kids to behave this way? Was it something in their upbringing? Is it genetic?

What struck me were the parents. They help perpetuate it. They don't treat it like it's a problem.

Facing My Own Insecurities

There is something that has been eating away at me for over a year.

I have to admit that I allowed someone to cause permanent damage to my life. Myself.

I allowed the BPD in my life.

I allowed her to stay in my life after repeated red flags and outrageous behavior.

I allowed the stress and anxiety of the situation and other bad situations in my life to control me. To perpetuate bad habits and destructive behaviors.

I allowed her to string me along. Lie to me. Ultimately betray and cast me aside like a piece of garbage. I allowed all of it to happen. My own insecurities crippled my ability to have boundaries. To respect myself. To love myself. Ever since childhood I have this skewed sense of myself. It has crippled me my entire life.

I have to break the cycle of feeling worthless and hopeless. It's so hard when you've been dragged through the gutter by someone who wallows in it. We enter these relationships with the best of intentions. We want to help. We want to love. We want them to feel loved. We want to make it all better for them. It's a trap though. Once you're ensnared it's so damn difficult to break free.

I have to forgive myself for loving her. I didn't know what BPD was. I didn't understand mental illness. I didn't do anything wrong. I cared. I'm only human. I didn't make her treat me terribly. I didn't make her cheat. I didn't make her betray our love and friendship in such terrible ways. She just IS. That's who she is. That's what she does. She can't help herself.

It's my fault it happened because I didn't say "No"

I didn't walk away earlier before things became too personal and meaningful. I allowed her to walk in and stay. To cause the damage. I could have stopped it at any time by simply saying "No", and walking away. I can play monday morning QB all my life, but there comes a point where we have to accept the decisions that we make and learn from those mistakes. To grow and mature as human beings. Life is about not about what happened. It's about what you are doing and what you are going to do. Living in the past is not a way to live my life. It's just coming to grips with my decisions, accepting what is as reality, and moving forward. It's so damn hard when you're a co-dependent that has been betrayed so badly.

About Sums it Up

Found this over at A Shrink for Men

Gave me a chuckle

This I Promise

I took this from the BPDFamily message boards. It rings true for me in many ways. I am still very much mired in the traumatic situation that happened to me. Examining myself. The choices I made. The lifestyle I was living.

A relationship like this truly changes your life. You are never the same again after an experience like this. You view life differently than you used to. Life is not a game. It's about choices. It's what you make of it. Youth is something that does not last very long. No matter what you do, life continues. BPDs treat relationships like a game. They play with people's feelings. The relationship is completely at their every whim and desire. It's a purely selfish, childlike endeavor. It's just their reality. They can't comprehend the importance of it. Love isn't anything to them but a word.

My ex told me love was "whatever you wanted it to be". Think about that. Imagine living like that. Imagine how empty and hollow you must feel inside to think that way. She just doesn't have a clue. When you're all alone in the world, love is all you've got. People that care about you. Who want to help you. Protect you. Those are gifts in life. My ex just threw it all away and for what? For drugs and to spread her legs for some other guy. It really is sad and pathetic that she thinks so little of herself to do that. No matter what happens, life goes on. We can't stop it. We can only try to control our own happiness as best as we can through the choices that we make.

THIS I PROMISE

Accept that you will never find rational motives behind irrational people (abusers, but you will drive yourself crazy if you try).

Accept that you will never understand whyor how s/he can be so cruel and lack remorse, and let it go. You can only learn to understand yourself and your own behavior.

Accept that you cannot control or change an abuser, not with any amount of love, money, or attempts to be the perfect mate, but you can control how, or whether you react or respond toward him/her.

Accept that your abuser has nothing you need or want. Each time your bruised psyche attempts to convince you that you want or need him/her, use you brain. If you stop to think about what you really want and need, you will find that these are things s/he cannot give you - Love, Honesty, Respect, Kindness. S/he does not have them to give.

Know that these needs are normal human needs (the desire for caompanionship, intimacy, love, honesty, respect, affection, kindness) and that you can have these needs filled. Learn to find these things from within yourself and from people other than your abuser.

Remember, that if you try to get anything at all from him, her, you are given them immense power, because then s/he then has the choice to either give it to you or withhhold it. Don't give him/her that power in the first place. Besides, why negotiate a deal with someone who doesn't have what you are negotiating to try to receive?

Remember that it is always wiser to risk long-term happiness and leave than it is to settle for long-term unhappiness (or worse) and stay.

In the beginning, before you learn to love yourself again, remind yourself that altho the most difficult and heart wrenching thing is no contact, it is also the healthiest choice and the only true way out.

Always know this. They need us more than we need them. We've just been brainwashed into thinking the opposite of what we now know to be true.

Admit to yourself and to trustworthy support persons that you need love, concern, understanding, support, and especially validation to make it through recovery from abuse.

Finally, remember that asking for or expecting any kindness, honesty, love, maturity, reason or other unselfish behavior from an abuser is like trying to get blood from a stone.

Try something you've always wanted to try. Take time for yourself. Take care of yourself. Do whatever it is you want to do. YOU ARE FREE NOW!

Start to consider what you want from a healthy partner in your next long-term relationship. If the peson you are dating wants to establish an intimate,long-term relatioship with you, let them know that you are available as a friend right now - and more may come later.

Learn to love and respect yourself. give yourself all of the kindness and love s/he never did.

Soon you will see him/her for what they truly are. And you will learn about yourself as well.

BPD411

I came across this website and wanted to spread the word.

BPD411

It has a LOT of great resources.

An introduction from their website:

Emotional Detachment

Why it’s Important Nons are all the time doing really stupid (or desperate) things in an effort to meet the emotional needs of their BPSOs. In some cases the intention is to ’give him what he wants’ to ’make the crazyness stop’.

These can range from simply not standing up for oneself, allowing a small boundary violation to occur, to emotionally, and

most often financially devastatingly stupid. One fellow we know signed his entire house over to his BPSO on the way out. His intention was to ’get out’ NOW. It didn’t work.

Another Non tried settling a divorce out of court by offering a $250,000 "signing bonus" during mediation. That didn’t work. Signing over kids doesn’t work. There is too much emptyness at the core of the BP’s personality for anything to work. Any thing that seems to work is usually of short duration and extracts a high price from others.

So how does a Non survive? The only way is through achieving a zen-like state called "emotional detachment." This means ’stepping out of the box’ that is the BP/Non BP dynamic. This means understanding that it’s NOT about you, the Non. This means understanding that you are a sane person dealing with an insane disorder. You didn’t Cause it, you can’t Control it, and you can’t Cure it.

Emotional detachment means learning to see that what the other person (the BP) is doing in terms of the disorder. It’s all about them, not you. Learning that what they are accusing you of, is most often just what they are thinking, or actually doing. When this happens the BP in your life is Projecting his thoughts, fears, actions and even behaviors onto you. What he says about you is often a tool to understanding what he is thinking about, planning or may attempt to do.

Getting into a place of emotional detachment means that you have to STOP spending time, energy and oft times money, attempting to ’prove’ to them that you are NOT being controlling, emotionally abusive, unfaithful, etc. etc.

Emotional detachment is absolutely required to do well in court and in life in general with a BPSO. You need to get out of the "emotional quagmire" and be able to see things rationally. Setting boundaries for yourself is one way of looking at this.

That is, if you set a boundary with yourself that you will not be angered by BP behaviors, then you’ve maintained a boundary internally. This is a good thing.

Now, emotionally detaching, while important, is very difficult. This person who has the disorder is important to you. You care about them.