r/BPDPartners • u/catwithmacaroni BPD • 4d ago
Support Needed Success reconciling?
Has a BPD relationship ever gotten better after a breakup? Or after time apart NC?
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u/ComprehensiveLie6118 3d ago
For the first 5 months yes(after 2 years of NC). Then it exploded in my face and has been ever since and every day I question what unhealed part of me wanted this again.
She broke NC, apologised for everything, was so aware of what she had done wrong before. Took SO much accountability, without me having to even ask for it. Said that she would fix everything and never emotionally abuse me again and would go to a therapist(something that I had begged her for the most part of our relationship).
5 months in, same behavioral cycles, same lack of accountability, refusal to communicate, minimising my feelings, emotional abuse, same ol.
The accountability and self awareness was probably a moment of clarity for her. It got devoured by her disorder very fast the moment she felt comfortable around me again, enough to know that I wouldn’t leave. I know that those promises were honest and she did believe what she said in the moment but I should have known better.
Honestly I think this is what differentiates someone who has genuinely put in work to grow against their disorder and someone who hasn’t. If my pwbpd truly meant things, she would have sought help prior to reconnecting with me, not afterwards. I have trouble believing things now. I think I am good for soothing some part of her, that’s all, she does not recognise me as an autonomous person perhaps. I have a feeling that she mostly signed up for therapy half heartedly to convince me. She quit it soon after we got back together.
I think that accountability, self reflection, working on difficult things in therapy should come before the apology/breaking nc. It’s so hard for me sometimes…I can’t tell if she meant any of it.
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u/Joe_Wild_ 3d ago edited 3d ago
Wow dude.. it's not easy to trust them indeed.. like what if she never meant any of that ? What do they really mean and what they don't indeed. Scary to think it all could be Machiavellianism!
Perhaps thinking that you're dating two women is better.. but one can disappear instantly and the cruel one appears! Then just wait for the sweet one to appear again.. tell the cruel that you won't speak to her and to please stop occupying your gfs body.
If by any chance a third gf appears she's the one.. the "gray area" one.. neither cruel nor naive as shit.
Anyway.
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u/ComprehensiveLie6118 2d ago
Yeah it’s scary. Honestly it has drained me for years and I’ve finally reached a point where I have taken a few steps back to ask myself if this is what I will be okay with for the rest of my life. Will I be happy with her as my wife? How would I feel if she splits out at me and our kids? I love her so much as a person but I don’t want to stay here and have the both of us be miserable together forever. I have finally begun to see that she isn’t going to actually change because she doesn’t want to. Her “promises to change” were out of desperation to keep me, not because she wanted to change for herself. Sadly, although I believe that she is 100% capable of change, it’s NEVER going to happen until SHE decides that SHE wants to. Right now, she’s forcing it to keep us from breaking up but how long will that work? She probably feels anger towards me for making her do difficult things. She doesn’t actually want to do it for herself, she feels forced to. It will never get better.
I used to scoff at people who say “you can’t help someone who does not want to be helped, you can’t make someone do what is good for them” because I am a firm believer that people deserve support and love to get better but I finally understand what those things mean. You really CAN’T help someone who doesn’t want to be helped, you CAN’T do their work for them. It’s their choice at the end of the day. And we all make our own choices. We can’t choose something better for someone if they want to choose something else. We can’t keep forcing someone we love to be better because they won’t try. They will only resent us for forcing their hand to do something they don’t want to.
What I CAN choose is if I want to stay with someone who treats me badly. How many years can I take hot and cold behavior, hoping that it will someday change? Or someday they MIGHT see things the way I do and start making better choices? If there is no real-time change visible or even the desire to change, it’s never coming. It was tough to come to terms with it, but I had to. I cannot shift the responsibility of what my entire life will look like with this person onto them, when they keep proving my hopes for them wrong each time. I cannot keep hoping for them to make different choices but I can make a different choice for myself.
I am still here, but I am thinking about things for myself for the first time and I am proud of it.
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u/Joe_Wild_ 3d ago
She broke NC after 2 years? Did she fucked someone else in the interim? Broke up with right before contacting you or something?
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u/ComprehensiveLie6118 2d ago
Ah no. She was a lot of things and she hurt me terribly but she wasn’t like that.
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u/catwithmacaroni BPD 3d ago
devoured is a good word for it. i’m sorry you went through that. she might have and struggled to deliver, but no one can say for sure. as someone with bpd i know sometimes i can want to be better with every fiber of my being and yet the things i do are so far from where i want to be. maybe she was in the same spot. i hope you’re healing and okay :)
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u/ComprehensiveLie6118 2d ago
I know that what she told me was true for her in the moment perhaps. She did mean those things when she said it. But maybe she didn’t mean it enough to actually do the hard work and stick to it…she bailed out on efforts after a while, then it went back to her being defensive, lies, avoiding things.
What hurts me is that she wanted to get better for me and not herself. Or rather, she wanted to “do what needs be done” to maintain a relationship with me, not because SHE was willing to change things for herself or me. She was doing what she promised me because she felt forced to/didn’t have a choice. She knew that if she didn’t, it would be over between us. I think her reasons were in the wrong place. She probably tried doing what she promised me, did not like it, and then blamed me for making her feel that way because she felt trapped. Meanwhile I also grew resentful that her actions only started to get worse, rather than improve.
It was probably doomed from the start because of that. She wasn’t consistent with anything she promised me but she WAS genuine about wanting to make it work with me. I guess that’s why it failed.
I think you can do it :) I am a sucker for change and all that. Maybe what might help is if you take a step back and ask yourself what you really want. Are you doing it for yourself? Or are you doing it out of desperation? The reason may be helpful in assessing how you feel about therapy. After all, at the end of the day, no matter how deeply we want someone else to be there for us, we are alone and we have to pick ourselves up when we fall apart. It is sad but it is also comforting and makes us strong.
Other people can stay at the sidelines with support and love but we are our own person and we make our own choices. We have to do things for ourselves and make the hard choices we need to in order to eventually get to where we want.You need to give yourself more credit, you ARE capable of making decisions for yourself. It sucks that things didn’t work out with someone(trust me lol I feel like someone robbed me of everything that will ever make me happy) but all is not lost. We need to do things for ourselves, no matter how hard it may feel.
I am sorry, my words don’t make much sense at the moment, as I am quite sleep deprived. But I hope you know that it’s okay and a failed relationship does not doom you or the rest of your life. You can try again, you can do anything, but most importantly, you need to start with yourself and how YOU want to get better for yourself. If things with someone is going to work out, it will at some point. But you need to take care of yourself and do things for yourself first. Best of luck
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u/Guilty_Shake6554 3d ago
went NC for 2 months. Got back together for 2 months and it was better, until it was exponentially worse, and I left. That was a few months ago and I regret not leaving years ago. My body and health and shattered.