One month without being blamed for everything. One month without being yelled at, shut down, devalued, belittled, or discarded. One month of going out with friends without calculating whether I'd have to explain myself later.
What nobody told me about was the memory. He would recount arguments we'd had and I would not recognise them. Not because he was lying — I genuinely believe he wasn't.
The reason you can't get over your ex isn't weakness. It's because of a very specific cocktail of psychological tactics that have left your nervous system in a state it was never designed to be in for this long.
It is not an exaggeration to say that finding this community helped save my life. No one around me understood what it meant to have your faith in people dismantled that completely.
I have been with my partner for four years. He has BPD. I want to write something that is not a warning or a survival guide, because I am tired of those being the only narratives available to partners of people with BPD.
When my partner was diagnosed with BPD, my first instinct was to research it. I read everything I could find. Most of it was written from a clinical perspective, or from the perspective of people who had left relationships with someone with BPD and were processing the damage. Very little of it was useful for someone who wanted to stay and love well.