BPDFamily.com

My BPD is a young woman who I've been seeing and attempting to construct an actual human relationship with, with some success, for close to two years.

Our relationship started out purely sexual but, when it started to wind down, she frantically tried to keep me in her life. After discussions, fights, name calling, begging, and some doses of rationality, she admitted that she suffered severely from BPD and asked me if I wouldn't mind reading up on it.

What I found shocked me - all of her outlandish behaviors, cause and effect, were text book. Although annoyed, confused, and worried, I really did understand that she was suffering and sequentially decided not to be another man who abandoned her after "using" her.

She admitted to me that she doesn't know how to enter a relationship with a man she is infatuated without the use of sex. It's her go to. I came to find out that it is also a form of self mutilation and that she forces a lack of care for her personal space and body upon herself as a punishment.

She has been doing this since she was 16 years old and although we've worked through boundaries and establishing that I want NOTHING from her except to have her as a very nice, interesting, and valuable friend, she continues to hurt herself (sometimes sleeping with 2 or 3 different men a day), jeopardizing her health, self worth, and safety.

I don't know how I'll be able to detach her from the idea that she needs to keep our relationship sexual in order to have me as a friend. She has said time and again that she has nothing to offer me (and of course rebuked that statement and blamed me for making her feel that way but, that is always shortly settled after a firm, reassuring statement validating her feelings and and by telling her that she is letting her emotions dictate truth.

I care for her safety and well being and I'm not sure how to handle this.

Suggestions?

Does she have traits of sexual addiction?  People with sex addiction pin their self worth on being sexual.

https://bpdfamily.com/tools/articles14.htm

What do you think?  Traits?  And of the recovery model?

Wow, that's an interesting situation. So, if I am understanding you - you no longer want to have any kind of "dating" relationship with this woman - just a friendship?

My fiancé describes her life the same way - where for a long time she did not know how to have non-sexual friendships - she claimed she had sex with all her friends, men and women.  I think that attitude destroyed her frienships, and prevented her from having close romantic partners.  And I think it still affects our relationship.  She says she was "self harming" herself using sex almost up until the day we met.  And while she hasn't specifically said it, I think much of her internal turmoil regarding our relationship is shame from her past, and never having resolved the issue of what role sex plays in her life.  And several things she has said indicate to me that she isn't quite comfortable with a monogamous lifestyle, as if being in a long/term monogamous r/s it taking away one of her coping mechanisms.  

I certainly commend you for trying to be her friend and help her out.  I also commend you on having strong boundaries about wanting to be her friend without the sexual component.  I'd advise you to take a deep and honest look at the friendship, as to what you want and need out of this friendship, and whether you think she will ever fulfill that role.  The reality is, she has a problem, a very serious problem, and you can't help her, fix her, or change her.  You can keep appropriate boundaries for yourself, and that may or may not help her, but in the end she needs professional help.  I should caution you - as I am sure you have already read - a relationship with a pwBPD is exhausting.  One way to keep yourself from being overwhelmed is to recognize that you are in the relationship/friendship by choice.  That helps keep you from being dragged into her mess.