However my most significant thought is if she was the kind of person who would leave like this then perhaps you are more fortunate than you realize. There could have been much more significant and unpleasant surprises in you future if she had stayed.
People who are willing to make significant decisions or actions that affect others without their input or consideration are best not present in your life.
Probably not what you want to hear right now, but if it is BPD then you may have caught a bullet now, but escaped the large artillery barrage that would have come later. Just be prepared for her to change her mind next week.
Assuming that Ambivalid is truthful and there are no missing information (deliberatly or out of ignorance on the OP part), yes, she is. A decent person involved in a relatively acceptable relationship doesn’t disappear suddenly without a word.
I mean, she didn’t even left a “Sorry, I’m leaving you. I couldn’t have handled a confrontation, you couldn’t have made me change my mind and no amount of explanation on my part would have satisfied you. Sorry again for leaving in this abrupt way. I wish you well” note on the table. Even if the circumstances and personalities made this solution the best for everybody involved, which is conceivably possible, such a note would have been the absolute minimum I would have expected.
I’m amazed to read that such an experience is so common (although on this board, it seems that regardless how weird an OP circumstances are, there are always a dozen “me too” responses, so maybe it’s not really that common after all).
It truly sounds like you were very generous of spirit and understanding. It sounds very much like you did more than most would and all you could.
Please don’t beat yourself up over this, doing your best is all any of us can ever do, after all. Unfortunately sometimes it can prove to not be enough to make things go our way.
I’m going to say the same thing I’ve advised others in similar situations:
[ol][li]Move on.[/li][li]Don’t try to contact her.[/li][li]If she does contact you:[/li][list=a][li]Be polite and ask specifically what the contact is for.[/li][li]Do not ask her why she left. After all, she obviously thought it was the best thing for her and she obviously enlisted help in skedaddling. Asking her why she left is only a way to tear yourself down and also an opening for her to tear you down.[/li][li]Do not ask about her boyfriends, ex-husbands, whatever.[/li][li]If she overlooked something there, ask her to whom you should send it. Do not “hold it hostage”, do not deliver it in person to her new abode; simply ask where she would like it sent and then send it there with no letter in it. She’ll know it’s from you and she’ll know what’s in it.[/ol][/li][li]Delete her from your contacts lists on your cell-phones, E-mails, etc.[/li][li]Move on.[/li][li]Yes, I know I said “Move on” twice. I like moving on.[/list][/li]
Years ago, one friend to whom I gave this advice ignored it. Hey, that was his privilege. He’s now unhappily married to her and simply cannot afford to divorce her. Another friend thanked me years later and is happily living the good life in another country because he can afford to.
I’m not saying it’s the best advice in the world. I’m saying it’s worked for someone, and that it seems to me to be a good way to not continue the drama of a single, albeit elaborate, event.
Unfortunately, relationships with BPD sufferers don’t have a great success rate, and those sufferers can wreak a lot of damage to those close to them. It’s not their fault, but the ongoing stresses are usually too much for most people to accept for long, much less try and fix permanently. Some things are just too hard to deal with without wrenching your own well-being out of shape.
So sorry to hear about your recent troubles Ambivalid. That is one cold way to leave anybody. No note or anything? Was she usually the type that avoided expressing her feelings or anger? She may have wanted to avoid a “break up scene”. Still, she should have at least shown you the courtesy of a phone call or note. At least she didn’t take your dog too.
It will get better Ambivalid. A new gf and a newer and hopefully better relationship will eventually come your way.
best regards
Ace
That’s not always a helpful perspective. I’m glad that the OP is getting a variety of different views, and hope that he can choose the ones that are most helpful.
When your SO dumps you suddenly and w/o explanation, you’re gunna be confused. Being told that you’ve a person who loves bad people, that you are unable to tell the difference between bad people and good people when in a relationship, is not necessarily helpful, and it’s not always true: sometimes people can’t be defined just by one thing that they’ve done.
Okay, no one else has admitted it, but I did something very like this to a guy once. I was young then, and yeah, it’s a shitty thing to do, but I was a bad girlfriend in many many ways.
We weren’t exactly living together. I had a place, and his stuff kept moving over there, and encroaching. We’d been together 3 years and were going nowhere, and we probably both knew it but didn’t want to admit it. So he went on a road trip with his brothers, and I moved to another state. Mostly because I hated confrontation, but also because I decided my life there was shit, and I needed a new start in everything. New job, new friends, best to leave fast, I felt.
He tracked me down, and moved in with me for real, and things went on to die a natural death after that so there was no point, really. But at least we ended on a somewhat better note.
I worked out some of the craziness and sometimes I regret it. Other times I just resent his showing up at my place in Denver (which was a really, really small place, I don’t know if we could have worked it out in a more hospitable crib). (See I haven’t worked out ALL the craziness.) Still a crappy thing to do to someone and it wasn’t really his fault. In fact he was well out of it and probably, so are you.
A part of this, I’m sure, is her almost pathologically anti-confrontational nature. Mix that that with my, let’s say, not so pathologically anti-confrontational nature (;)) and I can at least understand why this happened when I was not home. But that is only one of many questions I have unanswered. And it really fucking sucks, to be honest.