Hey, my name is Alex, and I'm in a relationship with a woman (lets' call her M) who was recently diagnosed with BPD. I've always heard of BPD, but I'm only just now starting to really familiarize myself with it and it's effect on relationships, but all of the things I've read seem to ring true with my experience with M. I'm sorry in advance if this extremely long, but for those of you who manage to get to the end, I would love some advice
M and I met four months and our relationship got intense VERY QUICKLY. M has been through a lot in her life. She was sexually abused as a child by her stepfather, and that has left her dealing with PTSD, severe depression, and most recently she was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder. She told that she's tried to commit suicide in the past. Of course, that's only one side of the coin. The other is the absolutely incredible person she is. Fiery, compassionate, worldly, ambitious, and - normally - incredibly loving.
When we first started dating, she was only a few months removed from being in a serious and long-term relationship with someone who was emotionally and, at times, physically abusive toward her. She maintained a relationship with her ex as friends, and although I definitely found that troubling I was falling in love with her so I just went with it.
After ex found out that Marie and I were dating seriously, he blew his s*** and skipped town. Even though Alex had extricated herself from that relationship months ago, it seems that that were some unhealthy co-dependent tendencies that she had a hard time leaving behind. After he skipped town, Alex felt compelled to try and settle his affairs even as he was attacking her and emotionally abusing her via text constantly. I have to admit I have a very laid back personality, so I didn't try to push her too much when it came to this relationship. I just tried to be there for her.
A few weeks later he returned to town, apparently after having been discharged from a mental facility. He was around only temporarily presumably to “pay his debts”. Alex told me that he had burned so many bridges in town that no one would take this guy in, and he had to stay at her place. In hindsight, I wish I had protested more strongly, but she assured me she was doing it only to expedite him getting back out of town as quickly as possible.
This is when some really hilarious stuff started happening: apparently by “pay his debts”, what he really had in mind was stealing. A lot. He and M were caught at the mall with over 1000$ in stolen merchandize. M told me that she didn’t steal anything herself, but she did admit that she took him to the mall knowing fully well he was going to steal.
I ended up spending the day trying to coordinate their release from prison, and somehow I actually spent 600$ of my own money to bail him out (I still don't know how I let myself do that). This clearly would have been a very justifiable spot for me to gracefully exit the stage, but I genuinely loved M, wanted to help her and be there for her. And she was very shaken after this experience.
This situation came to a head when he ransacked M’s bedroom and found a condom or something, which to course sent him off the deep end. M went to calm him down and he hit her. I wanted to call the police on him (I really wish I had, but M basically begged me not to because there was marijuana stuff in the house). By the next night, he had flown home and was “out” of the picture.
After that things were actually great between us. There were some problems though. The big one: even after everything that had happened, M continued to maintain pretty frequent communication with him and had a bad habit of doing it when I was with her. So one night I asked her not to text him when I was with her, and somehow this balooned into a massive argument. I don’t know how. I think it’s a pretty reasonable boundary.
There was a lot of emotional pain that night, a lot of "I'm not even sure you love me", a lot of "I love you, but I trust you less now." Since then, it's been a seesawing cycle of breaking up and getting back together. Sometimes she'll treat me with such intense love, and others it will seem like she would rather be with anyone else.
She has accused me of not being there for her emotionally, but often times she doesn't express her emotional needs AT ALL.
I feel like I go out of my way to make her feel loved, respected, and intellectually valued, and a lot of the time I don’t really get much back. She doesn’t seem to have any interest in my life sometimes. Never asks me anything about my work, my feelings, basically everything. Recently we were discussing our relationship and she mentioned it how it bothered her how I DIDN'T discuss my work and creativity with her, and I had to tell her, "You don't engage me about my work and creativity, M." I don't know, it seems like the onus is on me to fuel all of the necessary communication. Things always seem to be structured through the prism of "what I'm doing wrong", and she doesn't have much awareness of her own behavior.
She experiences so much doubt about my feelings that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Sometimes I just want to tell her, "If I didn't care about you, why would I stand by you and bail your abusive ex-boyfriend out of jail!" But I don't like bringing that stuff up because it feels like emotional blackmail. I don't want that to be a trump card I can play any time there's something wrong because I'm not perfect either.
Of course, the more I read about BPD the more this makes sense. I've dealt with depression for years, and I feel for M's struggle, but it doesn't make her behavior less hurtful yet. I haven't quite gotten to the point where I can separate her from her BPD related behavior yet, and I wonder if I can.
This is a litany of the ways in which the relationship has been negative, but there are positives as well. When she's not like this, M can be incredibly loving, sensitive, a vibrant soul. And I truly love her.
It's a difficult situation. My closest friends think this is an unhealthy relationship for me (there has been a lot of conflict and pain, and I've gone to my friends for support on numerous occasions).
We're having a conversation tomorrow about the relationship, and I truly don't know what I'm going to say. When painful, hurtful things start happening, I can see with great clarity that the relationship isn't right, but then I will be with her later and she'll look at me with the most loving, intense eyes and I remember why I fell in love with her.
