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I have had a long roller-coaster with this guy, and now we're in a no-contact period (again) after he broke up with me and I don't know if this will be the last time (it felt more "final" on his end than ever before, but who knows!)

This is my story:

I met my guy in Spring 2010, online. I'm from the US, he's from Canada, gay. When we met, I already should have been cautious; one of the first things he told me was that his relationships in the past had been "always tumultuous." We were just friends at first, but instantly clicked, talking online for like 5 or 6 hours a day each day that whole summer. For me it was love at first sight, literally within the first week of just talking to him online.

I found out some things, already then, that should have set off red flags but I shrugged them off; we were/are both young (I was only 21 at the time, he's only a year and a half older than me) and I figured lots of people had teenage angst or were still figuring themselves out in college, etc.

Anyway, I learned that his longest relationship before I met him (with a guy he was very sexually fixated on, but whom was obviously not a very good mental match) was 10 months. He had only had one other "major" official relationship before that, a 7 month fling that I'm pretty sure was "just for fun" on both their parts and which ended (allegedly) mutually because they both knew it was temporary from the start. The 10 month one, however, which had ended about 8 months before I met him... .had been rocky and ended tumultuously. I'd learn more as I got to know him over the past three years but basically the story was this:

My guy had always had a certain ambivalence about gender and sexuality. As a little kid, he had identified more with females, and has said that he's glad no one discovered and tried to be "progressive" with him, because up until the age of 10 he probably would have been diagnosed as transgendered and been put on hormones or something. Around 10 or 11 he made his peace with his male identity, and then up until the age of 15 he was attracted to girls. In fact, he was in love with his female best friend (still the only case of "being in love" he's willing to unequivocally admit in his life). Then at 15 or 16 he "went gay" and it horrified him and he's spent a long time reconciling himself to it. (One more thing I later learned was that, though he denies any memory of sexual abuse, he was having sexual fantasies already at the age of 7 of himself as a woman being raped... .)

Around the age of 18, I think, this same girl friend whom he had been in love with (before his homosexual awakening) wound up, in turn, in love with him. However, she already had a boyfriend at that point, and he was gay by then of course, and so it caused a lot of suffering for both of them and they wound up (allegedly by a sort of mutual agreement) going into no contact. He didn't talk to her again for several years. He sent her a poem in the mail at some point (which I've seen, and it was ambiguously romantic in tone). Later, not immediately after the poem, she did get back in touch.

By then he was already with his 10-month guy, the one whom he was very much sexually obsessed with. The return of his best girl-friend pretty much messed up what was already a rocky relationship. My guy had already been having religious guilt about the relationship (he has switched religious views several times in his life), and was ambivalent in other ways (he was embarrassed to hold hands in public, which was a point of contention, and was extremely reluctant and inhibited in bed, etc). When the girl returned he decided he was going to leave his boyfriend and run off and marry her. When they met again and he realized she was not interested anymore and had a new boyfriend and that (oh yeah) he was gay and she was a girl... .he decided to try to make things up with his boyfriend.

But by then the boyfriend (who apparently reads the signs better than me!) was pretty jaded, allowed him back in for a few months "on probation" for the summer, but then dumped my guy in the autumn when my guy was on a semester abroad in Europe. His ex, by the way, got together with another guy within 3 months, and they are still together happily today and are, from what I've seen on facebook, an adorable and very healthy couple! My guy, however, was miserable, tried to win his ex back with poems and stuff, but the ex would hear nothing of it (good for him).

Well, anyway, I entered the picture that spring, fell in love, like I said. He seemed more cautious, but also I felt so intimate with him. He invited me up to visit him in Canada after just 3 months and I went up and it was such a great time, he was so charming, and he initiated cuddling several times. However, there was another friend of his in the picture already, someone he had met that winter I think, and though he denied there was anything between them (indeed, he adamantly said he was not physically attracted), I could tell that this guy was in love with him too, and that maybe they were moving towards a relationship nonetheless. Well, I was right. After the trip I asked him about a romantic relationship, he said he didn't see it, and then a few weeks later he told me (all teared up) that he had started a relationship with this other friend.

I should have just left it then, but we agreed to still be friends, and I guess since I had nothing to lose, I got rather bold. I proceeded to continue making romantic gestures and gifts from afar in some pretty epic ways. That winter I became his closest confidante. He expressed mood-swings many times and being rather unhappy or unsure of his relationship. It became an "emotional affair" between him and I. When I went up in Spring 2011 to visit again finally, we had a great time and it felt so intimate and I slept in his bed and on the last morning he started cuddling with me bare-chested, which I think was definitely a form of cheating.

I cut him off at this point, sent him a mean email about game playing. About three weeks later I get an email from him where he was distraught and devastated seeming, but didn't make any firm commitments. I found out that the boyfriend had been abandoned by his parents for being gay as a kid, and my guy felt like his boyfriend "needed" him and though he didn't really want to be with him, he was terrified of hurting him, he pitied him so much.

I told him that, then, we had to simply leave each others lives, and he freaked out and said he'd leave the boyfriend etc. He said he didn't want to talk to me for a while after that, though, and so we didn't talk for two weeks again. Then he came back and things were fine for a month. But then he sprung it on me by surprise that the boyfriend was moving in with him! The next day!

I got really angry, of course, and cut him off again. But then, and I don't know why except this gut instinct that I could "win"... .I decided to make an international move into their neighborhood in 6 weeks. When he found this out, he apparently freaked out, but mutual friends indicated to me that I still had a shot, so I moved up there and we started talking again. That autumn was hellish. He'd come over every few days, we'd "talk," negotiate essentially, and he'd always manage to buy more time with "I don't know what I want, I'm so confused." He asked for a month off again to collect his thoughts, and so we didn't talk for another four weeks, and then when he came back from that he STILL hadn't made any decision and so I said "Okay, then I really have to end things and move on with my life." Well, then I get an email a few days later saying he's broken up and the boyfriend would move out within the next six weeks.

When the end of that six weeks approached, I got an email from my guy saying "I'm sorry, I can't do this" and the boyfriend wasn't moving out and he was cutting me off. I called him up and got sort of hysterical and he agreed to stay in touch with me and not officially get back with the boyfriend. For the next 8 months we had a sort of "detante." He was still living with the ex, but not officially back together. I knew they still must sleep together occasionally (later he said, yes, but it was very rare), but as long as I got to see him I ignored it. The ex knew, in general, that he and I still saw each other, but he tried to keep as much specific information about the other from each of us to spare our feelings. Later I found out that, during this year, the ex was revealed to be a raging alcoholic, there were "incidents" (it was never confirmed whether these were overdoses into the hospital, or public scenes resulting in arrests and the need to bail him out, but it was something like that; he said it felt like "betrayal" if he told me any specific details) and my guy felt like he needed to nurse the ex and help him through this alcoholism, it was a big codependent thing in that regard. The ex stopped paying his half of the rent, and started bringing other guys home and sleeping around.

Around that summer I got fed up with this triangle again and cut him off after a particularly romantic weekend was followed by basically ignoring me the next week. We didn't speak for three weeks. Then a mutual friend (who also had a sort of jilted, unrequited love thing against me) revealed that my guy had been talking to him since the cut-off. This mutual friend had sort of tried to sabotage a reconciliation and withheld the information, but finally felt so guilty about that he sent me copies of all their conversations. My guy was once again distraught at being cut off, said all these very sweet things about me to the mutual friend.

Still wouldn't say, concretely, that he was in love with me or wanted to be with me, but said "I don't know if I even know what love is" and that he thought we were two of a kind and that he felt awful without me in his life and that he needed me back, etc etc. I was moved by this display, because it was made to a third party rather than to me (and a third party whom he had no reason to expect would ever pass it on to me), and so I got back in touch but then he got ambivalent again and said he didn't want to make any decision until a month later when we were all moving out. He was going off to grad school in another city, I was moving back to America, and the ex was staying behind. He wanted to finish his lease and move out from the ex before he made a decision. So I once again relented and, with a little browbeating, he promised to "prepare himself for our relationship" when I left.

The next two months, long distance, felt good, like they were building up to making our relationship officially finally now that he wasn't living with the ex. I was set to visit again Fall 2012, and assumed that would be when we closed the deal. Then, a week before my visit, he messaged me all distraught that he didn't want me to come, that he couldn't go through with this relationship, etc etc. At first he tried to say it was because he felt this "dread" about the thought of being with me, that I "scared him." I suggested that this was commitment-phobia, but he denied it and came up with all sorts of excuses. Later it was revealed, however, that the real catalyst for this freak-out was that the alcoholic ex had had another crisis and then cut him off and they weren't speaking for three weeks and my guy then missed HIM and wanted to run back and give him "the chance he never really had" on account of our triangle. I started noticing the pattern at this point! I talked him into letting me come visit "for closure." It was a bittersweet trip, and there were a few points where it felt like he was coming around again, but he stuck to his resolve, we blocked each other on facebook, and parted. I sent a "you were right, this is best" email a week later and that was that. For three months.

Three months later, in early 2013 I broke my no contact resolve and sent him one tiny text based on a news event that had very special significance for us. Suddenly it was like the floodgates had opened. He was all enthusiastic and intimate seeming again, sent me a gift by mail right away, said I was right about so many things, it was like we were totally sympatico. However, it was odd. He never said whether he was back with the ex, and so after about a week, I cut him off for about a week saying ":)ammit, more of the same games." He emailed me a few days later and said, "I'm not hiding anything, but I'm still trying to figure things out. I wish I had something better to say than that. Is there something I should say? I need my head on the right way. I'm not dating, but I remain in a delicate place with [the ex], whom I still care about so much and I'm worried for. Mostly, it's you two in my mind. And I'm scared for myself, for my own inability to see what I want, and how I'm in constant flux. I want to be more responsible to others. Does this make me a bad person, just a coward? Do I have some kind of problem that I can't fix on my own? I don't know. Like I said, I really am trying to piece myself together. I really did want to hear from you. Maybe we started talking again too soon, though." 

Well, we got to talking. We had a long talk about codependency and how alcoholics can't be enabled and how he can't stay with someone merely out of a sense of being "needed" or feeling guilty about hurting him, etc. He seemed to agree, and then he agreed to come visit me in the US for the first time about two months later when his school year finished, and for those two months, again, everything felt great and there was an implicit understanding that he was going to "close the deal" when he came on his trip that Spring. 

Well, he did come, but it was really the beginning of the end again. It started out pleasant, but when I started getting physical he was standoffish and when I initiated "the talk" about the relationship he got belligerent. Turned out he had slept with the ex again a few weeks before, and decided he was going to go back to him. We fought all day, and finally I wore him down and got him to agree to "try" our relationship for at least a few months. I told him after all this, I needed the dignity of the official title for a little while, so that in describing my romantic history I would at least be able to have the dignity of calling him an official "ex." He reluctantly agreed, and after trying a few times to wiggle out of it over the next week settled into it for a couple months, though I always felt on edge from that point forward. Still, I tried not to push it at all. 

At one point about a month later, I think he had another moment of clarity and talked to me about how he's so ambivalent about his sexuality, doesn't know some days if he is "really gay," about how he always compartmentalizes his homoemotional bonds from his sexual attractions, about how spending his life with one guy "would require about as much compromise" as spending it with a woman and thus "not knowing what he wants." But quickly followed by denying that any of this was dysfunctional or abnormal in our world today and denying that he needed any help or to fix anything. 

Anyway, in early July he made it clear that it wasn't working and that he wanted to end it again, and I knew that was coming. We argued and argued and he gave all sorts of reasons about just not being in love, not being attracted, wanting to be alone for a while and to find real passion... .but under the surface I could tell he wasn't really going off to explore again, but was swinging back to the alcoholic ex still (later confirmed). Once again, I talked him into one more trip up in early August. The month in between was tense, and our contact was decreased. The trip itself was, again, bittersweet, but he remained adamant about this not being what he wanted. He looked me in the eye and said he had "absolute certainty" blah blah blah.

And that's where we stand. It's been 5-weeks no contact, though I sent a sort of mean email saying "Wait a minute, you lied, I found out you've been frequenting the ex again, so it wasn't that you wanted to find something new! This is just old patterns again!" I haven't heard from him in 5-weeks though. 

I'm in therapy now, finally, it just wore me down and exhausted me. I'm trying to stay detached and date other guys and just have fun and work on finding a job and stuff, I've had several interviews and life seems to be moving forward in that regard. But trying to make sense of it all I had to wonder if this whole story has major signs of BPD on his part?

I know I was/am codependent for far too long. Obviously the alcoholic-ex thing complicates it even further in terms of the cycling back and forth. This time I don't know if he'll come back? My therapist and I have said that if he does, I have to make firm demands like that he get therapy, make our relationship public, and write a letter describing his issues and asking his family and close friends to hold him accountable for sticking to his resolve to continue therapy and get better. But I'm not sure, if he came back, he'd agree, and I don't know at this point if I'd have the resolve not to go another round on the roller-coaster. Already I'm thinking I'll probably send a text either on his birthday in October or for Christmas or New Years, just to see if the "floodgates opening" thing happens again like this past winter when he returned after 3 months No Contact. 

It was such an addictive relationship because here was this nice, sweet guy (he was NOT the raging or impulsive or self-injuring type; he definitely did not have DSM symptoms 4, 5, or 8, but arguably has the other six) who was obviously so attached to me at certain points, so intimate, and yet apparently terrified of the intimacy, of commitment, of making it official or saying it openly, and yet I always felt like he was so close, if I was just patient enough I could "save" him. I know I can't now, but he'd have these moments of clarity where he'd admit his confusion and constant flux was pathological only to take it back and come up with an explanation for his mood swings and ambivalence that was totally "logically" and I got sucked into that logic and into arguing with it, because he was so good at making it sound valid and convincing. 

Some other things I should mention: he's something of a hypochondriac; when he's in one of his dark periods, he'll get all paranoid that some minor physical symptom may be a fatal disease. He often spoke as if me and the other ex/boyfriend were sort of "symbols" of two parts of his own psyche at war with each other (me the strong-willed "patriarchy" part, the ex the weak, pathetic, "victim" figure). 

He also had a hard time recognizing his own emotions. One time at a New Years party he clearly had a crush on this guy, followed him around, batted his eyelashes at him, kept trying to dance with him. We all saw it, and I wasn't too jealous because the guy was clearly not interested. And yet to this day, when asked about it, he'll deny any crush because "I like him, but I have no sexual attraction." Well, like I said, he seems to compartmentalize sexual attraction from an emotional bond, and so I think he may not understand that you can still have a crush on someone in spite of compartmentalizing out sexual desire like that.

Furthermore, to add one more example of an unstable relationship into the mix, when he came back this past winter I learned he had made a new group of friends at grad school, and one of them was this hipster guy. Well, it sounded like my guy had a small crush on him, but it sounded harmless, even though it sounded like the guy had a crush too. I say I thought it was "harmless" mainly because my guy, again, totally denied it, even though it was pretty obvious to me. And he sort of dismissed the thought of the other guy having a crush. Nevertheless, it disturbed me a bit to hear that my guy had done some minor things that sounded a bit like leading him along, stuff like drinking wine and reading poetry together by the fire that most people would consider a "romantic" gesture, but my guy denied it and seemed totally oblivious to it. Well, I found out on this most recent trip that the hipster guy cut him off and stopped being his friend because, basically, he got frustrated with such teases and with being played with like that and with my guy sending those mixed signals (while still maintaining a pretense of "just friends" and so the hipster guy got fed up and cut him of and they no longer speak either! So... .yeah. 

Does this sound like BPD? What in particular? Any similar stories or situations?

 *welcome*

UmbrellaBoy

Good you find us here.

Your story sounds very textbook of BPD - many members here are going through similar on-of relationships.

This workshop could be interesting: US: "Relationship Recycling" - What is it? (https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=95860.0)

Good you are in T for your own.


Honestly, I think this is the best you can do.  |iiii

Wow - major rollercoaster.  I would say a few things that scream out from this.

You desire better than this treatment, only you hold the power to stop this.  I hope you find the strength to really let this guy go and heal.  I have been in the place you are before, so I am not judging... .just want to say there is something really wrong with a relationship when we are having to "talk" the other person into being with us, or beg them to keep trying the relationship when they clearly don't want to.  At least not on any level NEAR where we are.

My thoughts on the guy... .I think he may not truly be gay.  It sounds like he feels much shame on that in itself, and perhaps that core issue (if correct) is what causes the man to not be able to make up his mind.  Perhaps it's not really about whether he wants to be with you, the other guy or a new guy.  Perhaps it's that he can't make up his mind about being with a man period.  He has no idea what he wants.  HOWEVER - this DOES NOT excuse his treatment of you and games.  It is ALL ABOUT HIM is what his behavior conveys.  

I don't know if you would find this view point wrong or offensive or anything, hopefully not as it is not how it is intended.  Maybe will shed some light on a possibility.  Perhaps this guy is not gay at all, but has had some sort of sexual abuse by a man at some point.  And that part of him/experience that did something to his psyche opened the door for him to deal with confused feelings/issues.  If he connects (even though unhealthy) to a trauma bond that would have occurred on a level that intimate, he could be seeking to recreate that same bond while not really being gay.  The fact that he has had the feelings he had for previous girl may even further this assumption.  Just food for thought here.

At the end of this crazy disaster mess, what it really comes down to is this guy is not good for you at all.  You deserve to be treated with love and respect.  He cannot offer that and frankly he doesn't seem to care at all the level that he uses you and leads you on.

I hope you stay strong and just keep moving forward and away from the toxic storm.

That's an interesting point, Lady31. The ambivalence about sexuality on his part is definitely a huge thing in his life, I guess I'm wondering whether that is one way that that BPD can manifest itself, one specific form it can take, especially symptom 3 re: "Identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self."

I don't know if he's "not really gay," but I wouldn't be surprised if he was sexually abused as a kid given some of the things he's described (like those rape-fantasies he was having as a seven year-old), given his general psychic make-up. I know that many BPD sufferers have sexual abuse in their past. I also know that some people say that sexual abuse is one pathway by which some people can come to a certain variety of homosexuality (though not most of us certainly!) and I wouldn't necessarily dismiss that off-hand.

Can that ever translate into a healthy regular sexuality though? He and I talked about it once and he knows it isn't going to change at this point, so the question for him is really about working with what he has now. It's just that "what he has" is so ambivalent and fragmented... .

I think what you say is definitely true about it being less about "do I want this guy or that guy or some other guy?" and more about ":)o I want a guy at all?" or even ":)o I want anyone at all?" thus leading to this ambivalence. Part of that was what was so enticing about him; this sense that he was so kind, so gentle, so loving really, that it felt like he had so much to share, so much affection, so much love to give... .but that he also seemed to "not even know what love" or romance was.

For me, I've never had a problem identifying and labeling my feelings, whether it was just a pure physical attraction, a little crush, a bigger infatuation, or being in love or limerent, and while sexual and emotional attractions ("lust and love" are not always in the same proportion, there is always at least some of both in any real attraction, and I can go from there and know what I want with a person, if there is any realistic future, etc.

He, on the other hand, seems unable to realize it even when he's clearly infatuated or clearly in love, doesn't seem to be able to clearly distinguish between platonic emotional involvements versus romantic ones, compartmentalizes sex from romance (he even said, "I never love what I lust for, or vice versa", and seems to inappropriately blur the intimacy-boundaries of friendship and romance, but in a way I think is entirely oblivious on his part. So there's all this confusion and ambiguity and ambivalence that I think really made things crazy but also very enticing.