It’s always a bummer when the days get shorter and the temps get lower. Eventually the trees will shed their beautiful greens in favor of rust, orange, and yellow. I don’t mind the trees changing color, it can be beautiful at times. The lower temps, though, are largely what I’m not a huge fan of.

Friend of mine just went through a messy breakup. I guess not just per se, but it was in the works for some time and only recently culminated in what therapists in the biz call “The Final Discard”. I’m trying to be the supportive friend, but he keeps saying things like “I want her back”, and the reality is that he does not actually want her back. He’d take anyone and anything ready to settle down at this point, he wants someone, not necessarily her specifically.

I kept telling him that he needed to get over this girl. Her frequent mood swings, the gaslighting and manipulation- I knew what she was before he did. They were supposedly officially dating and she wanted to have her male best friend stay the night while he’s in town, and she didn’t want her boyfriend there while the best friend was staying the night. If that’s not a red flag I don’t know what is. Why wasn’t the boyfriend welcome? Because she wanted to fuck the guy? Yeah, she wanted to fuck the guy. Obvious borderline. They’re so garbage, and all it takes is rigid application of DBT workbooks to not be garbage, but they’re too comfortable being horrible. Whatever, man. It’s not my problem, thank fuck. I vowed to not marry a lunatic and kept that vow despite the pressure to break it. Did I lie? Yes, I pretended to propose in a field of dead sunflowers, which is pretty symbolic of how I actually felt about it. It was dishonest, but it felt like a far lesser evil than all the dishonesty thrown at me.

My friend started calling out the gaslighting and manipulation without realizing that he was priming his borderline for the discard. He doesn’t really understand what kind of flame he’s playing with and so suffers for it. If he understood what I do he wouldn’t bother with another borderline ever again.

It will never be worthwhile to throw your love into a black hole that never gives anything back. Of course, I now have a marriage that is deeply fulfilling, but honestly I have to admit- I might not have been able to pull it off if I hadn’t learned to police my words from the borderline ex. She made me hyperaware of myself which helped me figure out that I wasn’t the problem no matter how hard she tried to say I was. That was only reinforced by psychiatrists and psychologists in the hours I’ve spent in therapy. Of course, you have to engage in therapy in good faith to truly gain any benefit from it, but borderlines tend to approach therapy seeking sycophancy, not treatment. They will lie and manipulate the therapist, which is always most evident during couples counseling. But I know that if my wife and I ever needed couples counseling we would be able to find our way back to each other. I didn’t realize just how much trust means in a relationship until I met my wife.

My friend going through this brings up a lot of horrible memories for me, and even the “good” stuff was mediocre at best and quickly surpassed by a ton of other events in my life. It reminds me that my ex isn’t fully to blame, I wasted eight years of my own existence because I was terrified of what I didn’t know as well as what I did. I should’ve stuck up for myself a hell of a lot sooner, I should’ve been more aware and more proactive in protecting myself. I should’ve taken pictures of my ex vomiting after taking too much morphine and dilaudid and photographed the pill bottles with her name on it and kept better records to protect my kid, that’s all on me for not doing so. I should’ve kept records of her cycling in and out of addiction and made videos of her violent screaming fits and ridiculous toddler tantrums, but I didn’t. Those are my chief regrets these days.

I hope my friend finds the courage to want more from life, to want more from a relationship. I found it and I can never look back, I’ve never known happiness like this before, even though I still have to co-parent with this untrated borderline diagnosed toxic person.