Recovery Relapse

Having a hard time and would really love some thoughts/support from the community.

My pwbpd and I have been out of each others lives for a year now. I stumbled upon something online that made it pretty clear she was seeing a new person. I’d been really solid at avoiding looking her up or trying to see what she was up to but this happened accidentally and it really triggered me hard.

To the point where I masochistically looked him up (I know of course I shouldn’t have but I got so thrown and my usual self care resources failed me) and he seems like a really nice and really successful guy.

So of course this has sent me down a spiral. Being so envious that he has a chance with her, wishing so much that I had handled things differently so I could be that person. But all of my attempts to “handle things” always led to me being attacked and mistreated and blamed (very successfully to the point where I was convinced that I was the problem). It’s been a really hard journey (with therapy) to grow to trust that her disorder made her really good at convincing me that I was the fucked up one when in fact that wasn’t how it went down.

But seeing her with someone new has suddenly made me question things and blame myself again. Like what if this guy got it right ya know?

I know it’s not as simple as that and I know nothing about their day to day dynamics and I know that he may well be in for a very painful ride.

But right now I’m spinning out and seeing him as everything I wasn’t able to be and agonizing again about losing her and losing what I hoped so hard could have been. And I guess I’ve also been holding out hope she’d come back around someday (at least to apologize and tell me she still cares about me) and this kinda dashed that hope.

I’m telling myself that this is a temporary setback and that I’ll be okay but right now it’s pretty tortuous. I hate that I can still miss her so much. I’m at a loss of what to do. When she was sweet she was so so sweet and that’s who I miss. And that’s who I’m sure he’s getting. It’s really tough.