u/AdvantageNo9212

I’m exhausted, pouring all hearts, brains and more into this relationship, tweaking all my life goals around just to BARELY appease him. Nothing appeases him not even himself. I tried so hard and at the end he just doesn’t want to talk to me. It’s like as if all I did meant nothing.

“If you don’t do (…..) I won’t talk to you”
I will do the requested things.. Guess what happens? Get stonewalled anyways. It doesn’t matter what I do I’ll get stonewalled

I have never felt so dismissed in ANY of my relationships in the past or non romantic relationships.

My wall of texts to console him was met with “but you’re not here”

“You say nice things but you’re not here”

“Ok you’re visiting but only for a week”

“A prostitute is better than this because you’re just on a video call. Like only fans”

Every single effort is met with dismissal. He said “if I dated someone like me I’d leave”

Why didn’t I listen to that back then?

At the end I only visited for 36 hours. I grew tired of moving my schedules around last minute only to get broken up every few months with one to three mins video calls, he wouldn’t talk to me if it didn’t have anything to do with my immigration plans. How was I expected to put my world upside down for someone who never gives a wall of texts of encouragement and affirmations like I did to him?

How am I supposed to move to a different country with someone who treats me like that? Time spent: 1 yr ish. Crazy I know.

Have you ever felt like your capacity for love and faith was so strong and so enduring to someone who kept punishing you for loving them?

I've been thinking about how overwhelming that kind of love can be for the recipient. Receiving love actually requires something from the other person: accountability, responsibility, an eagerness to learn and grow. And when they can't or won't meet it, even made efforts to destroy this love, the love doesn't stop. It just keeps pouring out, seemingly endless amounts of it. Those who have loved pwBPDs probably understand that feeling too.

It's the kind of love that becomes desperate and accepting for the micro improvements in harmful behaviour. ‘If I loved them hard enough they’d improve’.

A longing for them to just not be mean. They didn't even have to become a nice person. Just... please be less mean. Please be slightly better this week than last
‘just please hate yourself less’,
‘just please love yourself the way I love you’,
‘just try not to self-harm for this day. Just for today’.
‘maybe just no yelling for the next 2 hours, please’
‘Maybe tantrum every 6 months instead of every 6 days?’

Imagine love so strong that the glass vessel can't contain it. It ruptures, and it made us bleed.
I think this is how a lot of us felt. We loved relentlessly, we probably still do, and the vessel kept breaking. But here's what I've come to understand: The love isn't the issue. The vessel, the recipient was.

So now I think it's time at least for me to redirect that love inward. Toward myself. Toward growth.
We are now responsible for redirecting this love to our own vessel, and I hope we can all responsibly receive that love for our own growth. I hope the level of faith we extended to them, hoping they'd be just slightly better each week, can now be redirected to ourselves, to becoming better people for ourselves and for the world. Be kinder, be truthful about our boundaries, stay authentic to our values, live according to our values.

And maybe, eventually, for the next person who actually deserves the massive, persisting love we offered to our pwBPDs. They gave us a good look inwards, realizing how much love are we able to offer to another human being. I hope it doesn’t make us bitter. I am sitting here, in grief but also in happiness that I am capable of loving, like many of you in this subreddit.. It’s a good thing to be able to love and not be bitter and hateful.

I still have flashbacks about how my boyfriend (or ex.. I don't even know anymore) treated me. I love him, but going through this cycle over and over is painful. I understand BPD because I was raised by someone who is a textbook example of a Cluster B personality, so I recognize the patterns. But recognizing them doesn't make it hurt less.

The ancestry test. He forced me to take an ancestry test because he refused to believe I'm Jewish. This made me deeply sad. He made me reveal the results—and yes, I'm a mix of many things. He then went to his coworkers and asked them to guess my religion based on my appearance. He told me that Jews who aren't Ashkenazi (white European) or Sephardi (Spanish/Portuguese descent) aren't "real Jews." In reality, Jews come in all colours. I showed him the result in a language he doesn't understand because I refused to fully give in to that level of force and disrespect. I observe the religion quietly and have never made a big deal of it—faith is personal.

His mother. His own cousins warned me. They asked, "Do you want to sleep at our parents' place? For your mental health." I ignored the warning because I've always had good relationships with partners' parents in the past. But from our very first conversation, his mother interrogated me: How much do you pay in rent? How much do you pay for your mom's caregiving? What exactly is your job? I've never encountered someone so eager to tear down a partner's family member.

She dismissed my career, my certifications (she asked for proof), and my leadership experience. She liked to one-up me. She interrogated me about my immigration plans but never once showed genuine interest in who I am as a person. Every conversation became an invalidating, bullying session.

My turning point came when she minimized the abuse my sister survived from her ex-husband, and then said that people with conditions like her own husband's and like my mom's should die. I have never felt so disrespected in my adult life.

She also told me, "You need to think about your dog, because he hates hair so much and your dog is hairy, he'll throw both of you out the window." I know it was an exaggeration, but the message was clear: accommodate him or be discarded.

The STD accusation. After I had surgery on my ovary, while I was lying in a hospital bed barely able to walk, he accused me of having an STD. The accusation was completely false, I'm meticulous about my health. The nurses and doctors became so concerned about how he was treating me that they changed my emergency contact from him to my sibling without me even asking. Every single medical professional who witnessed our interactions was worried.

I had to explain, defend myself, and be yelled at while recovering from surgery. For context: he had previously told me he wanted to sleep with other women. After that, we didn't speak for two months. So yes, I was the one who got worried about STIs because a lot can happen in two months. He swore he hadn't slept with anyone. My tests always came back negative, but I've never had to get tested so frequently within a relationship before.

The good times and the confusion. We did have good moments nice dinners (that made me anxious about his finances), grand gestures. I always told him I didn't need all that. I'd suggest eating at home when I visited. We were long distance.

Where things stand now. He's not talking to me. The last thing I said to him was: "I never forced you to be with me. I can't make you want to talk to me if you don't want to." Part of me misses him. Part of me is already full, overflowing, with memories that hurt.

TL;DR: My bf (or ex?) forced me to take an ancestry test because he didn't believe I'm Jewish, then told coworkers to guess my religion by my looks. His mom interrogated me about my finances, dismissed my career, minimized my sister's abuse, and said people with conditions like my mom's should die, his own cousins warned me to stay elsewhere "for my mental health." He accused me of having an STD while I was recovering from ovarian surgery, and the hospital staff got so concerned about how he treated me they changed my emergency contact to my sibling. He once told me he wanted to sleep with other women. Now he's not talking to me. I miss him but I'm drowning in painful memories. I don't know what to do.