Withholding sex

[anik0]

Understanding the limitations of this disorder on the emotional satisfaction of relationships is the ONLY advice you will ever read online about somehow making "it work" Don't be in denial. The truth is, you are already not accepting the limitations of this disorder, because you are here trying to ask us if it's possible for HER to change.  

Yes, that is exactly what I am having problem with. I am trying to answer myself if I can accept her emotional limitations that comes from BPD. And I am thinking of starting my own therapy to learn more of my patterns of being in a relationships because they may not be ok and healthy for me.

Also I would like to take a closer look at what I need from a relationship to consider it satysfying. And if it is possible for me to be happy in a relationship with someone who will NEVER develop the emotional closeness as people with no BPD are able to. Or maybe is what my gf gives me is enough for me to be happy in a relationship.

I am not trying to get you to answer if SHE can change. No one can possibly know that. I am trying to find some info if it is possible for a BPD person to work on the intimacy issues with a success. Not that long ago therapists would tell us BPD is something not to recover. I studied psychology and one of the professors told us: "the tehrapy with pwBPD is a lost cause. If they don't kill themselves there is a very low rate of getting better anyway". That was told as a joke but still it was pretty sad. Now there are people who claim they recover from BPD. I want to learn more about what it means, about what had changed in their ability to be in a relationship, what about the fear of closeness, did they learn how to control it more or what?

Maybe that is not the board I should look for that info.

If I learn that it still doesn't give me the clue of what to do with my relationship as every one is different. I know anxiety5 that pwBPD behave in similar patterns. But still I believe they are not to be measure with the same scale (not sure if there is such expression in english... .).

Guys, thank you for your replies. They are really helpful to me.

I know I should stay focused on my needs and my emotional safety.

I know that my relationship may be a lost cause and pretty soon I may need to focus on accepting that. I know it may sound stupid when I say that my gf is different from other pwBPD. Maybe I am being naive. Maybe I am just not ready yet to accept the fact that I should leave.

Whatever it is, thank you for sharing your opinions with me. Even though you say things that are sad to me, they help me to remember how serious BPD is and that sometimes it is just better to leave.

[BorisAcusio]

When they lose interest in sex, it's usually the end of road. Mine was the most sexual creature I ever knew, she had more stamina and libido than most of my exes combined together. It's a part of their hook and what they can offer for protection. After the devaluation, the "relationship" became virtually sexless. There were months when I was painted white again, two recycles, a long and painful demise of our "interaction" but the libido never came back. The same happened to her husband.

[anxiety5]

Understanding the limitations of this disorder on the emotional satisfaction of relationships is the ONLY advice you will ever read online about somehow making "it work" Don't be in denial. The truth is, you are already not accepting the limitations of this disorder, because you are here trying to ask us if it's possible for HER to change. 

Yes, that is exactly what I am having problem with. I am trying to answer myself if I can accept her emotional limitations that comes from BPD. And I am thinking of starting my own therapy to learn more of my patterns of being in a relationships because they may not be ok and healthy for me.

Also I would like to take a closer look at what I need from a relationship to consider it satysfying. And if it is possible for me to be happy in a relationship with someone who will NEVER develop the emotional closeness as people with no BPD are able to. Or maybe is what my gf gives me is enough for me to be happy in a relationship.

I am not trying to get you to answer if SHE can change. No one can possibly know that. I am trying to find some info if it is possible for a BPD person to work on the intimacy issues with a success. Not that long ago therapists would tell us BPD is something not to recover. I studied psychology and one of the professors told us: "the tehrapy with pwBPD is a lost cause. If they don't kill themselves there is a very low rate of getting better anyway". That was told as a joke but still it was pretty sad. Now there are people who claim they recover from BPD. I want to learn more about what it means, about what had changed in their ability to be in a relationship, what about the fear of closeness, did they learn how to control it more or what?

Maybe that is not the board I should look for that info.

If I learn that it still doesn't give me the clue of what to do with my relationship as every one is different. I know anxiety5 that pwBPD behave in similar patterns. But still I believe they are not to be measure with the same scale (not sure if there is such expression in english... .).

Guys, thank you for your replies. They are really helpful to me.

I know I should stay focused on my needs and my emotional safety.

I know that my relationship may be a lost cause and pretty soon I may need to focus on accepting that. I know it may sound stupid when I say that my gf is different from other pwBPD. Maybe I am being naive. Maybe I am just not ready yet to accept the fact that I should leave.

Whatever it is, thank you for sharing your opinions with me. Even though you say things that are sad to me, they help me to remember how serious BPD is and that sometimes it is just better to leave.

I empathize with your feelings. I, and I'd venture to guess, all of us have been where you are. There were aspects of her personality that were incredible and had nothing to do with her disorder. When I don't let it completely define her, I see it for what it is. This is incredibly frustrating. I see a person, who, if she had not been treated a certain way in her youth would exemplify everything I could ever want in another person. But there is a wall there. A barrier. And I tried to knock it down, scale over it, so many times that I kept holding on. Finally at some point, I just sat by the base of that wall's exterior facade, defeated and realized that I was never going to get over it and this was as far as things could go. This in a sense is accepting the limitations. Once you do this, more times than not you will realize that you are shorting your own needs and desires to having a fulfilling and loving relationship vs. accepting the fact you'll never really breach that wall.

You are right to focus on YOU. The facts are you probably have some codependent "fixer" or "rescuer" traits about you, and that is precisely why she was attracted to you. In short, the perfect partner to them are the one's who will circumvent their own needs and focus on them entirely. Your job is to figure out why you are like that. I've found more often then not it comes from an inner sense of inadequacy and low self worth. A lot of times it's a seed planted so long ago, you aren't even consciously aware it's there. But the way it rears itself today, is with the fact you view your self worth through the eyes of others. In a sense, the only way someone can be "whole" is to have a firm sense of worth and self esteem that radiates from within, without that we have areas or holes of deficiency. When you meet someone with BPD and you have these traits, it's the perfect attraction. They have someone who will focus on them, and you have someone who views you as amazing. This in essence is what the "idealization" or pedestal stage of the honeymoon period is all about. The key observation to realize though is that feeling that this perfect was "the one" or made you feel more alive than anyone else ever, has less to do with her amazing qualities and more to do with the way she made YOU feel about YOURSELF.  This is what love bombing is. It's a tactical manipulation wherein a manipulative person recognizes the deficits in another person and "fills" them in through words of affirmation, praise, or through sex. Realizing that it's less about how great she is and more about the fact she made you "whole" for the first time in your life through these tactics is eye opening, or at least it was for me. That's why any devaluation hurts so bad as the relationship progresses. The person who filled these voids in us, becoming the one to hurt us is a powerful action that leaves us with more holes than when we first met them. The silver lining in working on building your self esteem, and self worth by focusing on your own needs is that you have the chance to become whole as an individual, day in and day out as opposed to needing anyone else reaffirming these things to you in order to feel a sense of self worth.

[anxiety5]

When they lose interest in sex, it's usually the end of road. Mine was the most sexual creature I ever knew, she had more stamina and libido than most of my exes combined together. It's a part of their hook and what they can offer for protection. After the devaluation, the "relationship" became virtually sexless. There were months when I was painted white again, two recycles, a long and painful demise of our "interaction" but the libido never came back. The same happened to her husband.

What was the time frame in your relationship of this "loss" of interest? Did you find that the loss of interest in sex correlated to a loss of "interest" in the relationship? Perhaps it was a loss of patience and more anger/rage episodes or if the person is more subdued by nature, it was simply noticed by texts going unanswered, plans being changed last minute and cancelled, more space between you or mundane conversations.

My question I guess is, did you notice a loss of passion physically equated to a loss of passion for the relationship overall?

This is something that looking back at this very moment, I see clear as day. Wow. Thanks.

[BorisAcusio]

My question I guess is, did you notice a loss of passion physically equated to a loss of passion for the relationship overall?

This is something that looking back at this very moment, I see clear as day. Wow. Thanks.

Absolutely. She recently pinpointed the date when she started to build up resentment towards me, which in fact, was her first major rage episode over something trivial. Few weeks laters, she was already having an affair behind my back and things deteriorated fast, with a few plateus in between.

She could pinpoint the same event for her husband. Even described how the flip was switched in her brain. They were living together for another 7 years but the poor chap shared her with at least a dozen men from that point.

Perhaps it was a loss of patience and more anger/rage episodes or if the person is more subdued by nature, it was simply noticed by texts going unanswered, plans being changed last minute and cancelled, more space between you or mundane conversations.

Both happened. We used to talk hours over skype when we had time, exchanged passionate messages, ideas, she was truly hilarious, after the aformentioned event, those suddenly stopped and my role was oscillating between soothing her and being a persecuting parental figure.