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GuiltHaunted, Thank you so much for the post. It makes a lot of sense after reading up on BPD as I'm finding it more and more evident as time goes on that there was a lot wrong with my relationship that I never noticed. Its been eight months now since she left my life and I still have heard 0 from her and don't ever expect to. Even though I have started dating again, my XSO still lingers in my mind like no one else in my life. Perhaps our relationship was much like a shooting star, burning brightly and intensely, but quickly there is nothing left but dust... I did here from her brother that she has become very withdrawn and irrational. Not sure what its all about, but I just hope she finds happiness in this life.

All, Just wanted to give you an update. Im feeling much better than I have in the past couple of months as I have started really focusing on myself. I have stopped drinking all together, lost twenty pounds, started cycling again, and go to the gym at least three times a week. Without all these things and all your help I don't know if I would have made it past early July. The problem I have now is the eroding relationship I have with my best friend who is also Alex's (my XDSO's) brother. Our relationship has not been the same since January when Alex became very hostile. Not sure If he's just trying to make us both happy or if he's withdrawing form both her and me because he knows how much pain she caused me. I guess I just need to let time sort everything out...

Feralfae, Yes, I do meditate as it was something that was suggested by one of the other self help groups I belong to. Right now though, its very difficult to clear my mind, but Im determined to do it. I need to be able to see what my DSO and I had together was a good, very positive and loving thing and I need to be happy I was able to experience that level of love for a time. Im just not there yet.

Mary and Kay, Thank you so much for the support. Its been a very very very tough week for me as these "STUG"s are coming in waves. Once one starts, its hard to put a lid on it until I go someplace and sob for a while. I feel like a complete idiot walking around on the verge of breaking down most of the time this week and I have no idea what on earth caused me to regress to this state. Its a bit like being in a storm in a life boat, not knowing where you're being pushed or if you'll end up on rocks, dashed to pieces...

KayC and all... Its now been a month since my GF cut off all communication to me and I am finding some very strange things happening in my psyche every day which I was wondering if it normal. First, let me qualify that I don't think Im depressed unless I dwell on her memory or go down the self pity road which really goes nowhere... Second, I have resigned myself that she will never be coming back into my life in any way shape or form. With that said, I am experiencing what I could consider panic attacks on the most mundane and innocent things that are triggered by thoughts of my dead future to her and her daughter. For example, I found a Starbucks coffee card Indi, her daughter, gave me for Christmas of last year. When I went to use it, I almost broke out crying in bloody Starbucks! I am finding I have to really concentrate VERY hard on not relating things around me to the corpse of what was my relationship to Alex and Indi because the littlest and most innocent thing will take me there. At first, I will smile at the memory it triggers and then an absolute avalanche of pain follows when my mind hits the reality that she's lost and that future is dead and gone...

MartyT, Yes and Yes. Thank you...

Kayc, Unfortunately, every activity relates to her. Watching TV (which I have now stopped doing), going to the movies, writing my poetry, going on any trip, or simply BBQing on a Sunday... I do know at some point it will get better and I will move on from it, but I fear the after effects on my next relationship. God knows, it will be better as times go by, but as you stated, I doubt I will ever be able to really "get over it." I just have to make sure it doesn't define me...

KayC, Im not sleeping much in the past week and every bloody thing I think of involves my ex. Not sure how long that one will last, but thats a bit maddening. Im writing a lot in a journal to keep my thoughts down and writing poetry about it, both negative and positive. Also reading a lot of self help books on rebuilding your life after such an event. Thanks for all the help KayC, you're a special woman.

Cocoa and KayC, Thank you both for your support and words. Although I do know the pain will ease in time, my fear is that I will never commit again to any relationship because I won't be able to trust... I was an optimistic romantic and reveled in poetry and pro's and truly believed in love... Now I doubt I could write a limerick without it becoming dark... I would also like to say Alex was only the third person in my life whom I seriously dated and trusted. My high school sweetheart crushed me and taught me woman can be very cruel. My wife abandoned me and taught me that love at first site and romantic notions of fate are all just childish. And now the love of my life killed my spirit to deeply love for the first time in my life... Not sure what I can even do to get that one back... If at all.

KayC, Thank you for the response. The issue Im having every morning, evening, moment... Is knowing she is in deep pain and I can't help her, which I desperately want to, because I still hold very deep emotions and love for her that were formed in those first five months. It was like having her die in August of last year and having her replaced by someone else who pretended to be her. Then, in late December it was as if she had decided to not pretend to be someone else anymore and just become that person I didn't even know at all... What is killing me is how does one do it? How does one change so dramatically like that? I've experienced many traumatic events in my life that have turned my hair gray, but I always maintained who I was, never abandoned anyone in my life, and never took out my frustrations on the person closest to me. Perhaps some people are better at dealing with pain then others??? How do I ever trust anyone again???

Nettieboop, Thank you very much for the support site. I posted there and I really could use any advice on what to do... I feel absolutely helpless and completely devastated. I have no support group here in Houston and the only friend I have here is her brother and he really doesn't wish to get involved between us. Thus, I have no one.

Hello. I would first like to say that you have no idea what means to me that someone took the time to put this website up. It may have saved my sanity… And I apologize for the book I am about to post… I’m a 47 year old man who had his marriage of 19 end after my ex wife’s brother died of a drug overdose. Throughout the entire process of our breakup and the slow decline of my ex wife’s happiness, I could feel something was wrong, but I just couldn’t help or stop it from happening. Eventually, she walked out of our marriage five months after his death, as soon as my youngest daughter left our house. It was like watching a car wreck in slow motion where there’s nothing I could do to stop it… It really sucked the life out of me and left me devastated. I spent months dealing with pain on a daily basis. My work suffered and my home life consisted of drinking heavily to kill the pain I knew awaited every evening. The only saving grace in this process and what probably saved my life was my eldest daughter who helped me through the whole grieving process. It was eight months after this breakup, when I finally got my life back together and felt somewhat normal, in that I only broke down once in a while. It was early March and I decided to finally go to see my best friend who I had avoided over the past six months. At this time, I had a long time acquaintance, which happened to be his sister Alex, enter into my life. I could characterize the first five months of our relationship as incredibly passionate, symbiotic, and very strong. I had never experienced love, chemistry and connection on that level in my life. We had already had a twenty-year peripheral relationship, which brought us together on many occasions, including her mother’s death 12 years previous. Within two months of our relationship we were already discussing a future marriage. It was mid July when I received a text from her that her father, who had been fighting cancer for years, had fallen outside of his house and was now in the emergency room. Over the next three weeks he slowly declined and finally died in early August. Looking back now and after reading all the stories on this site, I can very easily see every sign of what was coming, if I only had the knowledge and ability to interpret them at the time… Her father was her whole life after her mother had passed away. Yes, she had her sister and brother, but she was a single mother with little contact from her young daughters father. Although she did have a job, she didn’t make much for her lifestyle. I had found out that her father had been a Doctor and paid for her lifestyle, which can be considered “top shelf,” and apartment in a very expensive area of Sacramento, Ca. Her lease for her apartment was coming up for renewal at the end of the month and she had no idea how she was going to afford the rent. She was not only dealing with the death of her father, all the external forces were crushing her. I attempted to take pressure off of her by suggesting if she needed to use me as a last resort, that she could move in with me. However, I lived over a hundred miles away in a small town in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, which would mean quitting her job and moving away from everything she knew in Sacramento. Within two days, she had made up her mind that she would move into my house after a planned trip to Lake Tahoe at the end of the month. At that time, I was surprised she made such a snap decision, but I just attributed it to her desire to be with me, not that she was completely incapable of any rational thinking during this period of the grieving process. We took our trip to Tahoe at the end of August to celebrate her 40th birthday, just three weeks after her father’s funeral. I knew she should be grieving, but she never cried, never needed support from me, and never showed much emotion about it, in effect, she had buried it deep inside herself. It was at this time though I noticed a very big difference in the woman I had known before her fathers passing and now. She no longer smiled at me, no longer looked at me with any sort of love in her eyes, and stopped responding to a daily love letter I emailed her every day since we first became lovers. She tried to be the same person, I could see her trying, but she was just wasn’t the same. She moved into my house a week later and we setup our domestic life together. She seemed happy, but again, she had stopped responding to me with the same body language as prior to her father’s death, but she seemed to be taking it all very well. Over the next three months, she picked out a new floor to go into our house, she painted the walls, and she would greet me every evening with a martini and a kiss. I was in absolute heaven with the woman I loved and I never saw the train wreck coming… It was the week of Thanksgiving and she desperately wanted to go visit my mother who lived in the bay area. I look at this point as the beginning of the end. My mother, a manic depressant, didn’t want to really deal with Thanksgiving so she declined. I knew my mother and also knew that if we had just shown up, everything would have been fine. However, Alex took this very personally. Alex began crying and told me that my mother hated her. She stormed off, telling me to forget it. I was taken aback by the reaction, not knowing how to fix the situation or make her feel better. We did have a very small Thanksgiving by ourselves, but I could tell she was still genuinely hurt. That next week, I tried to pull her out of what I saw to be depression by taking a ride with her and her daughter to a u-cut Christmas tree out in the mountains. We spend a day of it, picking out the tree, pulling out the lights, finding all the right ornaments, and decorating the house. I had bought thousands of white lights to decorate the outside of the house because he loved outside lights. She was smiling by the end of the day and we went to a Christmas parade that evening to see Santa for her daughter and everything seemed normal again. Over the next two weeks however, she needed to take frequent trips to her father’s house in Sacramento to deal with several issues regarding his estate. Day trips turned into two days, then three, then a week. She was rarely home that month spending most of her time at her father’s house. I asked her if she needed me to help her, but she kept telling me that everything was fine and that she was just going through paperwork at his house. She came back two days prior to Christmas and we spent the day making Christmas cookies with her daughter. Laughing, smiling, sharing… Everything still seemed fine. On Christmas Eve, I sent her a love note again and I received the last positive response I have from her. “I love you, you are my whole world.” Christmas morning came and she seemed very agitated. She made a Pavlova, which her mother had always made at Christmas time and we had a wonderful dinner. She told me she again had to leave in the morning for her father’s house, which caught me by surprise because we were going to plan that week for an upcoming trip after the first of the year to New Zealand for her brothers wedding where I was the best man and she was the maid of honor. However, I never questioned it and I would be busy getting everything ready for the end of the year at work. She departed in the morning. She returned a day prior to new years and I knew something was wrong. She was not smiling and seemed distant from me. That evening, when I tried to make love, she simply said no, that she had a breakdown in her car on the way to her father’s house and everything had changed but she couldn’t talk about it. I heard the pain in her voice, which came out in anguish, which surprised me, but I took this as her having an emotional response to it and left it alone. But New Years was no better, as she was agitated and began criticizing me. She barely talked to me the next two days leading up to our trip, but she did quickly relate to me how she felt like there was nothing for her to do where we lived. This was strange, because I had warned her about it so I didn’t understand. She told me she was looking into being a beautician and going back to school. I thought this would be a good idea for her as she felt so alone and isolated, but I had no real idea how she was going to do it. None of this mattered however, as we were going to travel the next day. We flew to New Zealand and I knew immediately she was in a very deep emotional state. The entire trip, she either ignored me or was completely hostile to me, to the point I contemplated flying home after two days into our trip. I stuck it out, but it just got worse and worse for me. Her daughter started attacking me verbally and my friend kept pulling me aside, apologizing to me for her sister and niece. I didn’t understand what was going on and felt like I did when my wife had left me over a year and a half before. I withdrew totally form her on that trip and attempted to just stay out of her way as any form of love was met with a hostile reaction. When we got back, I had formed a plan to find out what was going on and really tried to engage her by taking her and her daughter on hikes, and other excursions. Nothing changed however, as she was still withdrawn… It was at this time, her brother contacted me with a new job offer in Houston, TX. Alex immediately told me to peruse the offer and she seemed genuinely happy it had come up. So with that in mind, I was hoping it would mean a good positive change for us. She would be close to her brother and we could start a new life in Houston. Over the next month, I interviewed with the company and they gave me an offer making quite a bit more than I had been currently making. It seemed like salvation for us at the time. But when I told Alex about it, she immediately told me she was moving back to Sacramento and needed time to find a place to live. She found a school to go to and would need to find something by April 1st. At this point, everything became surreal. I withdrew further from her as every time I tried to reach her emotionally, I was met with hostility… I asked her about us and how we would survive this, she flat out told me that she had no interest in a long distance relationship. With that, she spent the next month at her father’s house until she came up to move all her stuff. I attempted over the past few months since moving to contact her, but I received nothing from her until last Sunday when I received this: <<<It is over. You must move on. I wish you all the best, but do not wish to maintain any sort of contact. This is the only time I will respond. Do not contact me using ANY means, email, text, phone calls or through other people. If you continue to do so I will consider this harassment.>>> She was the love of my life and the most wonderful person I have ever experienced in my time on this planet. To say I’m devastated is an understatement… The real strange thing is my ex-wife, whom I had the same experience with, finally contacted me socially and not through a lawyer the same day… The universe is indeed a very strange and chaotic place… 1. What are the chances, if any, she will ever want to have a relationship again and are there any success stories out there? Is it even worth even pursuing??? 2. Should I maintain any sort of contact (i.e. monthly) just to let her know I’m still out here??? 3. How do I deal with the pain which seems much worse than when my ex wife left me…