Many assert that a borderline is a covert narcissist. But you could be a borderline without being narcissistic. We were two quiet borderlines in a relationship, but one showed narcissistic presentation. It did not end well, but it left me feeling completely confused as to who she really was. I realized it was the narcissism in her that was the most damaging to me, because I did recognize myself in her in so many ways, but was unable to explain why I felt I was not good enough and responsible for the relationship ending the way it had.
In many ways, this is the hardest type of relationship to get over. You see the good in them, yet you don’t recognize all the ways they were being toxic, until you do and by then it’s too late. You get left wondering if there was something you could have done better, precisely because you can relate to them so well on a certain basis. Until you come to terms with all the toxic methods they used to make you feel less than, realizing that it was all a coping mechanism while at the same time something her ego fully believing the lies narcissism tells itself. It hurts all the more precisely because of the path narcissism tends to plot ahead for most people afflicted by the spiritual disease — a loveless marriage based on materialistic idealization of each other that fails time and time again because it was not based on unconditional love for each other.
I consider her my twin flame because she set off my spiritual awakening. Unfortunately, we have never talked since then, and I consider our twin flame relationship to be well past its due date.
I had considered that she was a false twin, a covert narcissist, however, I think the truth is she was a borderline turned narcissist to find a boyfriend who could provide her with the wealth and social life she wanted for herself.
I’m hoping this helps others on the journey to help them understand how twin flames are largely spiritual in nature, and do not replicate in 3D even if you do all of the spiritual work in a reasonable time frame.
If anything, it is YOUR belief in the twin flame story that keeps you tied to the cult and it is YOUR efforts that would end in a physical union. All of the work is on the chaser, I don’t believe in the fairy tale ending that I saw during my spiritual awakening. You need to reject this belief as fairy tale in order for you to move on from the twin flame cult.
Hey Twin,
In Korean culture, there is a concept called jeong. It’s basically a basic level of unconditional love we have for each other as a member of the Korean society. These are very basic levels of respect — meaning we treat each other with respect, kindness and decency you would do for yourself. I felt fundamentally wronged the way you behaved during and especially at the end of our relationship. It was this intense feeling of being wronged and unable to get you to understand and apologize sincerely for your behavior that I’m still unable to move forward. It was a fundamental violation of how we treat each other in our society. I know you are Korean American but I expected you to at least to be someone who lived the ethos, and you showed no signs of that, to me at least. But I hope this email does it for me, so that I can move past my guilt of trying to save a dysfunctional relationship long after it ended, so I can really live a happy life for myself.
I do not feel that you treated me with respect, kindness and decency during our relationship. Instead, you made me feel bad about myself by being passive & aggressive. Eventually, you became aggressive, controlling and critical with perfectionist expectations (and accompanying anxiety) about my flaws of we were to be in a hypothetical “marriage”, pointing out how unreliable, messy or lacked job security or financial safety. (Which all showed me how little trust you had in me and how you would rather sit there and criticize someone for being down, rather than helping him by listening to him and his issues).
You did not take interest in getting to know me for who I was and what I liked, and whatever I did like, you baited me into arguments that made me feel invalidated and hurt (J Cole, “racist Koreans”, “misogyny”). If you remember, everything we did revolved me fitting into your life, there was very little your world meets mine going on in our relationship. (When I tried, it was met with abject apathy and no interest).
You seemed to compare me to other guy friends in your life that was either corporate career-focused (so much so that he prioritized his career and cared little about his relationship — poor girlfriend of his) or inherited wealth (with an MBA and a Youtube career) that frankly sounded like a narcissist individual who wanted to get with you because he was desperate for sex after a long pandemic break.
You frequently wondered whether I was good enough for you — whether I had the kind of job or finances to support you. You wondered whether I really had friends that cared about me. You wondered whether my mom was a crazy bitch that would be controlling of my marriage life.
Then you withheld sex as a means of control to punish me, despite our earlier conversation about not weaponizing sex as a means to punish each other.
You started to withdraw and hide things from me and became obvious to me that you were losing interest and were out meeting new people, while our relationship was still in going on.
All of this really upset me, especially since your needs were safety, security and being understood. But for me, my needs were for me to feel unconditionally loved for who I was. I didn’t have any reason to doubt I could not provide emotional safety and material security for myself and my partner. I had no issue with two partners being able to understand each other if they could communicate honestly about how they felt. I felt I did that for you, but when I was constantly invalidated for being who I was, I did not feel safe or secure or understood in the relationship.
My point is you were so self-centered that you did not think to ask if my needs for safety, security and being understood were being met. They were not. That is why I felt I was not unconditionally loved in our relationship.
This is the reason why I could not commit to moving in together. It also did not help that you expected me to support you financially without explaining why and without expressing genuine appreciation for doing so.
It was not until we were wet into our relationship that things you did started to amount to emotional abuse, and that the pattern of passive and aggressive behavior had me trauma bonded to you. I realized you were showing narcissistic behaviors, not borderline behavior as I originally thought. (you had no abandonment fears, but I did because I was in the midst of a midlife crisis.
So I have diagnosed myself as having qBPD in addition to ADHD for most of my life, which stemmed from my relationship with my mom (who frankly showed similar selfish patterns of thought as you did). qBPD internalizes a lot of the emotional abuse and violation of boundaries, which also makes me dissociate, avoidant, derealized and depersonalized in a way that made me give up on life until I figured out why I was feeling this way.
On your Hawaii trip, it made me realize that you were someone whose love was conditional. You lose interest in the other person when that person is down in life, and start looking outside of the relationship. You denied this, but you were showing such obvious signs of cognitive dissonance that I could not trust you (you were obviously only thinking about yourself going out having fun, you would not look me in the eye, look away even as I asked if it was a guy and if you planned on cheating on me).
You also take problems in our relationship and take it outside to your friends to get sympathy and advice (which makes me feel less than human). You told our mutual friends about my problems, to make yourself look like the responsible one and I was not. Even in the end, you continued to communicate with my mom, instead of me, which made me feel completely invalidated as a human being you felt I was not worth talking to. You even continued to talk behind my back to my mom and suggested I be committed psychiatrically without even talking to me, when all I was hoping to do was to clear up the way you left me hanging at the end of our relationship (not explicitly saying let’s break up, yet moving on already from our relationship, promising me you’d be back in San Francisco, then retracting on that months later).
You need to realize that the reason why I went into borderline psychosis was because of the way you ghosted and no contact on me. No contact is used for dealing with narcissistic personalities. It should not be used in cases where you run away without ending the relationship, leaving the partner without answers on why.
I do realize that you may have been a borderline, because I do remember you telling me that I need to respond promptly to your texts and pick up your calls. But you did not tell me why and how it made you feel. It was difficult for me to understand you at the time because I was dealing with constant feeling in my gut from our earlier interactions where I felt you were masking in front of me, and you had harbored deep resent for me that you would not share with me.
But in the end, you showed more narcissistic qualities — being demanding and critical — to make me feel bad about myself, and constantly looking outside of the relationship that made me feel excluded. I thought you were an INFP, but me being an ENFP, I felt we never connected at the depth we wanted to be.
Especially unforgivable was the way you DARVO’ed me. Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim into Offender. It means you were the cause of most toxic behaviors in the relationship and made me feel so bad about myself to question whether I was being emotionally abused. And when I exploded in the end with anger from the frequent ways you invalidated me, you used that as a means to prove to yourself and our mutual friends that I was the “unstably abusive one that was vindictive or hopelessly in love with you” (I know this because you were frequently using our relationship as a means to strengthen your relationship with our mutual friends, by complaining about how angry I was reacting to your toxic behavior).
This is the method that Donald Trump uses on his “enemies”, you need to realize that is what you were doing just in a very manipulative and covert way. This is also what sexual offenders frequently use against sexual abuse victims — and knowing how much you hate misogyny, it should make you feel uncomfortable that you are put in the same league as people like them.
I did not know that I was being manipulated as I was, and that is why I kept coming and trying to work on our problems. And it ended up validating your behavior even further. This is where I know you were a narcissist, because you proceeded to become even more abusive, referring me to a suicide hotline, calling me toxic when I was reacting to you telling me you were convinced to go on this trip by a wealthy guy who impressed you enough to take him upon his offer.
But even then, I wanted to understand you and find a way for us to end things amicably. That is why I kept splitting on you for months after we broke up. You became such a different person when you moved to LA. But that just makes me a quiet borderline who went into a borderline psychosis for the first time in my life after significant emotional abuse. That makes you borderline with clear narcissistic traits — meaning you deliberately hurt the other person to maintain control over your partner. And that is the critical difference between me and you.
You also kept things entirely vague, saying you needed help but blaming that on depression from the pandemic and then asserting that our communication style did not mesh so well (I think you would have learned in therapy that your own style of communication were most problematic). You may have been right to assert that I was not good enough for you. I was ready for a secure relationship with a secure person and perhaps another quiet borderline like me. But i was not secure enough to be in a relationship with a borderline who was narcissistic.
The reason why your narcissism matters is because you had such a lack of cognitive empathy to not be able to see the relationship from my perspective. Otherwise, being a year out from our last conversation, you would have approached me first to apologize for your own behavior during and especially after our relationship.
If you were not reaching out to me because my mom recommended we not contact each other if you were not ready to give me another chance, you are giving me very little respect as a person. I’ve dealt with her in a way that she won’t be able to do that to me anymore. I’ve unloaded on my mom and I have clear boundaries and have explained to my mom why her own behavior is detrimental to her own kids. My mom admits she also has issues, although she finds it hard to deal with the harsh way (from my perspective i’m telling her the truth) I speak to her sometimes and she is working on better ways to relate to me.
I also had a sense you were involved with relationships where you were compensated with money just based on your last relationship where you dealt with a much older guy in his 40’s that was divorced, had kids and alcoholic enough to be asking you for drinks while he was driving. It did not make sense to me at the time why you found our relationship not good enough for you to work on, when you were involved with guys who were clearly narcissistic themselves, until it occurred you must have gotten into the relationship either because you were being compensated directly or indirectly by the wealth he already had.
I think I knew that subconsciously and that is the reason why reacted with so much fear/anxiety to your Hawaii trip. It felt like you were going there because someone was wealthy and paying you with benefits/money to be there. And I assumed what would be exchanged for that was sex. This was all subconscious, but there was a knowing, an intuition based on the patterns observed. That is why I was freaking out so much when you told me you were going to Hawaii. My fear was that you were baited into it by a manipulative, narcissistic and controlling person to do something you did not want to do for money, and that was the reason why you were being subversive about the entire thing.
I don’t know if this was the truth but I do feel that maybe you were just lying to me to get me feel jealous and have me leave you alone, while having the narcissistic satisfaction of feeling better about yourself about leaving me after you have acted controlling and toxic in our relationship.
I also do want you to know that I went through a spiritual awakening after this. Similar to what Kanye West went through. It should also be noted that his wife Kim Kardashian is a covert narcissist. She did have him committed psychiatrically like you were trying to do behind my back (which leads me to believe you were doing that to save your own reputation about how you behaved, not really to take responsibility for me. All I know is that I was going through a borderline crisis, of splitting on you because of the way you were narcissistic — withholding love for control and sadistically abusing me when I chased after you). It makes me want to believe Kanye was abused in his relationship for him to go through what he did. In the end, he came out of it as a person who talks about consciousness, God and wanting to do something to benefit humanity (admittedly with some healthy narcissistic flair, but I think that is ok given what he has achieved after all).
In that sense, let’s make it clear what I did go through from you was narcissistic abuse. I also got spiritually attached and possessed because I had extensive unhealed would stemming from this relationship. I won’t get into details because I don’t want you to use it against me like you have in the past, but it happens to people who are on their spiritual journey that have a lot of desire to do good in this world.
In the end, we were two very similar people, but one acted in a toxic manner that decidedly hurt the other person in our relationship. I also admit that I acted un-deliberately insensitive . when I was frequently unresponsive during my BPD disassociation phase when I was feeling so empty and my intuition was telling me something was wrong with the way I was living my life. You may label this as “toxic”, but it should have been obvious that my love for you was never conditional. I never made you feel jealous about my ex-gf or female friends in my life. And I made up for this by changing my behavior and going through what was a good happy 6 months of our relationship where things were stable and happy.
In the end, I want to believe you weren’t deliberately manipulative and toxic, fully knowing how much it screws over the other partner in the relationship because you seemed to lack empathy and had lost feelings for me similar to how borderlines struggle with alexithymia. I do want to believe that you were reaching out to my mom to authorize a 5150 after seeing how much you damaged me after the way you abused me during the relationship.
You seemed to know that I was also a borderline because you had told my mom you were concerned I would harm myself, but you did not let me know that. (To be clear, I would have never killed myself — I am much stronger than that. That’s what makes me a quiet “high-functioning” borderline without all the bad rep the label it seems to carry). To be clear because of that, you were the most damaging person I ever was in a relationship with, by far, precisely because you did not communicate verbally your own borderline/narcissistic tendencies when you already came into the relationship knowing my mom had borderline traits).
In the end, I wanted to believe that you had enough cognitive empathy to be able to see things from my perspective. But I did not see that from you. that is why I’m writing this email to you, and I hope you get to read this. Because I do care about you, understand you, and have a lot of compassion and unconditional love for you as someone got to know you as close as I did. I do want to see you get better and experience success in life and the relationships that you do deserve for yourself, given how much hardship you’ve had to deal with in your own life.
Lastly, I thought there was a strong spiritual element to our relationship after we broke up where I felt like I could sense what you were feeling and things you were going through. However, I have decided to ignore all these as a figment of my own subconscious mind wanting a closure or from a spirit attachment to confuse me to keep me tethered to this relationship this far.
But in reality, I think you just did not care enough about our relationship and wanted to end it without you being blamed for the relationship ending the way it did. I think that is why it led to all the I want space and time, but then going out to have fun and other relationships. You were too busy moving on from our relationship, and I was too eager to make sure it meant something. In the end, it did, but only because I had to realize that you really didn’t care much about the relationship, because you were in a “dating mode”, trying to find the “best person” to meet “your needs”.
The truth is probably somewhere in the middle, but closer to what I stated as the reality.
I hope this email makes you feel something about our relationship and what kind of person I am. I hope to hear from you one day about how you felt and your side of things, if not, just a sincere apology and tell me how you have changed as a result of ours.
I wish you nothing but the best in life, happiness and love. If there is one last advice, please read God Sovereign Free vs Archon behaviors — and see where you fall, and which behaviors promote success & abundance. Our corporate world is full of people showing Archon behaviors as you move up the top and especially so in large tech enterprises — that is one of the reasons why I was hesitating to work in corporate again.
https://ascensionglossary.com/index.php/GSF_Behavior
https://ascensionglossary.com/index.php/AD_Behaviors
Lastly, I hope you can find a way to tell the truth about our relationship to our mutual friends. I will meet them later in life somewhere down the road and relate to them how I felt. I am giving you an opportunity to save your own reputation, and I think this is more than generous on my part.
With love,
-Your Twin
Appendix.
I’m listing all the narcissistic toxic behaviors that I recognized as being present in the relationship as a means to let you know undeniably that you are narcissistic. I also want you to know that I mirrored some of these back to you in the hopes that you recognize them as being toxic during and after our relationship — please don’t use my own mirroring as an excuse that I was also narcissistic — it hurt me to do it back to you because I knew these weren’t healthy ways to relate to someone you love so dearly.
Oh also, I lost all of my life savings after our relationship ended. I recognize it being due to me having lost my sense of self by not standing up to the abuse that I was getting, and believing that you were a “good person” and that “I had acted wrong” in the relationship (essentially I believed your assertion that I was the problem, the abuser and the narcissist). It took me a long way to recover from that because I had gone on for a while believing that I had to be narcissistic, wealthy and polyamorous to have any chance of getting back with you. I also equated that with a spiritual direction from God (which it may actually have been true at the time, but that would be changing myself for you, would have done you no good, and would have left me in a broken marriage where you were outsourcing your love and affection to your friends with benefits, while I worked my ass off to provide you with financial security and emotional safety). Again, I say this with love, and I do want to thank you for saving me from that certain future by having me realize where your end of relationship messaging to me was leading you towards to.
Abusive Cycle — This is the name for the ongoing rotation between destructive and constructive behavior which is typical of many dysfunctional relationships and families. (This is how you rotated between hot and cold, causes trauma bonding).
Anger — People who suffer from personality disorders often feel a sense of unresolved anger and a heightened or exaggerated perception that they have been wronged, invalidated, neglected or abused. (I think you are guilty of this but you never articulated what it was that made you so angry. I also was guilty of this, but it was a response to clear abuse from you, but I recognize this is why my life went on a download spin afterwords, and your refusal to give me closure and work these issues out with someone you wronged so fundamentally made it even worse.)
Baiting — A provocative act used to solicit an angry, aggressive or emotional response from another individual. (This was entirely manipulative and you should recognize you did this).
Belittling, Condescending and Patronizing — This kind of speech is a passive-aggressive approach to giving someone a verbal put-down while maintaining a facade of reasonableness or friendliness. (At the end of our relationship).
Cheating — Sharing a romantic or intimate relationship with somebody when you are already committed to a monogamous relationship with someone else. (Definitely emotional and you made it seem like physical was in play by the way you were subversive on your Hawaii trip).
Emotional Abuse — Any pattern of behavior directed at one individual by another which promotes in them a destructive sense of Fear, Obligation or Guilt (FOG). You made me feel obligated and guilty for not being better.
Gaslighting — The practice of brainwashing or convincing a mentally healthy individual that they are going insane or that their understanding of reality is mistaken or false. The term “Gaslighting” is based on the 1944 MGM movie “Gaslight”.
Impulsiveness — The tendency to act or speak based on current feelings rather than logical reasoning.
Invalidation — The creation or promotion of an environment which encourages an individual to believe that their thoughts, beliefs, values or physical presence are inferior, flawed, problematic or worthless. (Did not care what I liked or who I was).
Lack of Conscience — Individuals who suffer from Personality Disorders are often preoccupied with their own agendas, sometimes to the exclusion of the needs and concerns of others. This is sometimes interpreted by others as a lack of moral conscience.
Low Self-Esteem — A common name for a negatively-distorted self-view which is inconsistent with
Manipulation — The practice of steering an individual into a desired behavior for the purpose of achieving a hidden personal goal.
Masking — Covering up one’s own natural outward appearance, mannerisms and speech in dramatic and inconsistent ways depending on the situation.
Narcissism — A set of behaviors characterized by a pattern of grandiosity, self-centered focus, need for admiration, self-serving attitude and a lack of empathy or consideration for others.
Neglect — A passive form of abuse in which the physical or emotional needs of a dependent are disregarded or ignored by the person responsible for them. (There is dependency in a monogamous relationship, such as validation, safety, security, being understood etc, that you seem to infer I need to have those needs met elsewhere, such as friends, because you aren’t willing to. Ironically you told me those were your needs, when you were failing to meet them in our relationship).
“Not My Fault” Syndrome — The practice of avoiding personal responsibility for one’s own words and actions.
No-Win Scenarios — When you are manipulated into choosing between two bad options (this was what you put me into at the end of our relationship).
Objectification — The practice of treating a person or a group of people like an object. (I felt you treated me this way even during the good times of our relationship. I was there for me to make a good impression on your social circles).
Pathological Lying — Persistent deception by an individual to serve their own interests and needs with little or no regard to the needs and concerns of others. A pathological liar is a person who habitually lies to serve their own needs. (You were definitely guilty of lying by omission or avoiding answers).
Ranking and Comparing — Drawing unnecessary and inappropriate comparisons between individuals or groups. (Comparing me to your guy friends is unwarranted, and destructive, and a way to spit on your own face).
Sabotage — The spontaneous disruption of calm or status quo in order to serve a personal interest, provoke a conflict or draw attention.
Self-Aggrandizement — A pattern of pompous behavior, boasting, narcissism or competitiveness designed to create an appearance of superiority. (You at the end on Hawaii trip).
Sense of Entitlement — An unrealistic, unmerited or inappropriate expectation of favorable living conditions and favorable treatment at the hands of others. (Pay less rent, financial support, rich boyfriends, or better career boyfriends, etc, when you yourself were not).
Shaming — The difference between blaming and shaming is that in blaming someone tells you that you did something bad, in shaming someone tells you that you are something bad.
Targeted Humor, Mocking and Sarcasm — Any sustained pattern of joking, sarcasm or mockery which is designed to reduce another individual’s reputation in their own eyes or in the eyes of others.
Testing — Repeatedly forcing another individual to demonstrate or prove their love or commitment to a relationship.
Triangulation — Gaining an advantage over perceived rivals by manipulating them into conflicts with each other.
