Possible trigger warning. I was going to share in another relationship forum, but I knew that everyone in those subs would make critical comments about her, and that's not at all what she deserves.

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We all know how it started.

She was magic. The embodiment of grace, charm, joy, sensuality, connection - the deepest most beautiful love I'd ever experienced. And to me, a guy who came from a family where my mother never bonded with me or showed me nurture or affection, my new partner felt like I was waking up for the first time.

 I'll call her K. K was (and still is) stunningly beautiful. She turned heads everywhere we went, men and women both seemed to go out of their way to acknowledge her beauty. But she carried it modestly, in no way flashy - she is one of the lucky few who was just born with it. She was also the mother of the sweetest, most precious three year old girl from a previous marriage.

It was a couple months in when the "other side" first showed itself. It was Christmas 2011, and we were at a friends Christmas party. I wanted to get K the most perfect Christmas present. One of our friends at the party (a female) was an incredible painter. From the first few weeks K and I were together, we joked we were penguins, mated for life. So I pulled the painter aside (she was a mutual friend of me and K) and asked about commissioning a painting of penguins for K's Christmas present. K saw me talking to her, made a face at me I'd never seen, and immediately walked out the front door. I chased her down, only to be screamed at for hitting on a girl right in front of her. I was so confused in the moment, turned upside down. I didn't want to spoil the present, but I wanted to let her know I wasn't hitting on anyone. But nothing made it better.

That was the start of the cycle. Almost every day for the next ten years we argued about "other girls." Exes I'd dated 10 years before. Cashiers at the grocery store who smiled at me, waitresses who called me hun, even my own sister. Then came the lying. The disappearing. The gas lighting. The total emotional isolation.

One day I was her savior, the best man who ever lived... the next day I was the devil. Sometimes it would cycle multiple times a day. It was a rollercoaster. But underneath the pain I saw her enduring, was this incredible woman, so full of life, so caring, so loving.

Nothing really changed over 10 years. I booked counselor after counselor for us. We'd go a few times before she decided the counselor and I were ganging up on her. She'd do her own therapy every once in a while. She eventually found a therapist she liked and saw her for almost six months. One week she asked if I would join a session, that her therapist encouraged it. The therapist was kind and warm, seemed very smart and on top of it. But when I started to share my experience, the therapist seemed baffled. She was completely unaware of the major issues - in six months K had never talked about any of the issues we went through on a daily basis.

About two years ago K started to pull away. She said she needed some space to figure things out. We weren't broken up, she insisted, she just needed time. It went on and on. As of spring 2020, we maybe saw each other twice a week. I'd moved out at that point, it was too chaotic living together. 

June 27th of 2020 she came over late one night. I hadn't seen her in a week. We sat in the hot tub, had a bottle of Champagne. She was more loving and affectionate than she'd been in almost two years. We had the most amazing, passionate sex that night, she told me she'd never loved anyone like she loved me, that she was so thankful I was patient with her while she worked through her stuff.

That was the last night I ever heard from her. The next day she stopped returning my texts. Wouldn't take my calls. She vanished. After two weeks of silence I drove to her house and knocked on her door. She wouldn't answer, only said through the door that she'd call the cops if I didn't leave. I broke down, bawled my eyes out. Left and never returned.

That was six months ago, and I'm still putting my life back together.

I don't hate her. I know she carried a burden so much heavier than most cary. I know the pain she lives with every day. We both came from traumatic pasts - for whatever reason I came out of my past differently than she came out of hers. I do not judge her for it.

I found out recently that she's in a relationship with an old friend of hers, someone who started working at her job with her two years ago, right when the major distance started. I can't be for sure she was seeing him while we were together, but I have a feeling she was. That hurts, but I still don't judge her.

I just needed to write this tonight, to be around people who understand. People who won't judge her, or judge me for loving her. I've been in therapy twice a week since K ghosted me. I understand everything so much better now. I knew about her BPD early only on, but I've come to understand it better now.

I still love her, and I always will. Her daughter also. What the world doesn't see in those who endure BPD (and I think what the person enduring BPD often doesn't see in themselves) is an exquisitely beautiful soul, capable of the deepest empathy and greatest love. She wasn't broken, she wasn't flawed, and she absolutely didn't deserve the self loathing she bestowed upon herself. She was infinitely better than she gave herself credit for. I think if she understood that, she would have understood there was no threat to our relationship, that I wouldn't abandon her, that she deserved every bit of the love I showed her.

And most importantly, she deserved all the love she never showed herself.