BPDFamily.com

Just curious to hear if other peoples experiences with their BPD are similar to mine.

My uBPDexgf totally overshared. On our first date she told me that she had tried to commit suicide 6 months prior and how she had been in therapy and on meds for GAD for 10 years. She would barely know someone and yet tell them the most intimate details of her life. She told her mum EVERYTHING about our relationship. I've never met anyone that overshared like this. She even said that she suffered from verbal dihorea (SP?)

Is this a common BPD trait?

I found with my exs they were very eager to share the bad stuff that had happened to them up to a point. My exgf said on a few occasions that stuff had happened in her past that I would never know about. She told me about being beaten up, raped, sexually assaulted at gun point and lots of other very traumatic stuff but her deepest secret from her childhood was never revealed.

Yep! Major  red-flag  red-flag

Lures the codependers and the rescuers right in their nasty web!

Mine did throw pity parties too, way way way before "apropriate", that is... .If the sad sob stories were true at all!

I have a huge suspicion that she was raped as a child. She had vaginimus and had had it for 10 years, she used to joke that she had been raped in a past life. Her mum and dad were still together but when she was a teenager she changed her surname from her dads to her mums, very strange! So yep, I think she had a major deep secret that she hid from herself.

Yep, disclosed his child's sexual abuse by a family member within the first 24 hours.

Yes over sharing is a typical behavior of pBPD's as they lack boundaries. Much like a four year old child lacks boundaries. A   red-flag that is often overlooked bc it feels much like a comfort zone. Like a person being so totally comfortable and trusting of you, bc you are so very special and unique that they can open up to only you and openly share. As they could do with no other.  Thats the false truth.   Its manipulation, even early on. Lack of boundaries. Always the victim.

And I venture to say not one bit of the over sharing would indicate anything less than how poorly they have been/are treated by those in their past or present. 

The irony of the latter stages is that they go from someone who over shares fully and drew us all the way in to becoming someone who treats us like a stranger. Cold. Prickly. Surface. Non sharing of a thing. For no reason of our own.

Its disordered behavior.

Yes, mine was careful to not say too much on our very first date because he had an experience where a date walked out when he told her he had a brain injury!  So waited until the second date and told me his entire life history which was tragic and sad, all the makings for a wonderful trauma bond!  He even had me crying with empathy on that second date!  I never had a chance!

Yeah I got her entire sick life story told to me almost instantly and it broke my heart. Weird how we ignore the red flags eh, most guys would have run for the hills if they got told the things I had. Sadly the white knight in me strode boldly in to rescue the fair maiden from her demons... .

Mine shared quite a lot of some stuff early on, things about her parents, her family, her past, ex's etc. This openess made me trust her and open up and tell her my stuff.  Big fckng mistake... .I told her everything, even things I didn't know I knew. I am quite closed and private person and keep most things to myself so for me this was a big thing. Before her I had a long term relationship with a woman for eight years (we were practically unmarried partners) and never told her half the things I told the BPD. And everything I said, every weakness and every vulnerability was used against me in due time. Biggest betrayal of my life! Ouch!

My wife shared a ton of information with me early on about all of her sexual adventures and other chaotic stuff from her life.  I have to admit, I was touched by her openness.  She seemed to really be confident and have it together.

I am wondering now if that was more about control than anything.  If there was something that I didn't share with her, whether it be that I forgot or I just didn't want to, she would tell me, "I tell you everything!" and get angry.

In fact, I think she really pressured me into revealing all of my flaws to her.  Of course anything I told her later on was used against me later.

Oh yeah pretty much this. After 4 dates she told me she had performed sexual acts against her will and that she didn't know if  we could ever have sex(we never did during the entire r/s), thought it was nice of her to tell me that stuff, so i actually shared a lot of private info with her that i never told anyone either. She used it against me as well.

Mine told me she had performed sex acts on a guy she wasn't interested in "just so he wouldn't leave"

How in God's name I managed to qualify that I'll never know.

oh yes!

A very strong case of way too much too soon.

When we were still "friends" while she was chasing me, she shared really deep and intimate stuff that I quite honestly did not want to know.

When we finally got together, there were loads of intense and lengthy full disclosure sessions as well where she swamped/dumped me with all of her past. Chaotic and tragic in nature and, of course, she was the victim most of the time, sometimes the heroine.

Well, i found out more over time. She abused me to the point of near collapse and I also found out first hand that she had hammered her ex in a very similar way.

So, I don't know what to believe about her past because her accounts were one sided and I experienced the other side.

Who knows, it could all be one big distorted tale.

Lot's of secrets too I bet

Mine seemed more interested in over sharing other people's information.  He was quite vague about his childhood, but he did used to make a point of seeming proud that his dad was someone to be feared (by others) in his neighbourhood.  He was also quick to assume I'd been sexually abused due to me being quite a sexual person.  It seemed an odd assumption to make.

He was quick to tell me about his suicide attempt though, and how I made him feel like wanting to cut himself when I ended the relationship the first time around.

aye, and suicide, she told me about one attempt last year.

I have since found out she has a long history of failed suicide attempts.

I guess she skillfully told me just about enough to lure me for the capture.

I honestly don't know what to believe so I don't waste much time anymore trying to figure it out. An entangled mess of half truths, concealed secrets and lies. That's the BPD world from my experience.

My wife said the same thing to me when we dated.  Although she said it to me because I didn't always feel like having sex 3 times a night when I saw her.  I was working full time and taking classes full time.  I was really determined to get away from my childhood and create a good life for myself.  She managed to monopolize all of my free time and sometimes I was just exhausted and needed to sleep as opposed to marathon sex.  lol.

She shared her divorce details with me over text before the first date. When i knew that she is divorced i said i should be careful with this woman as her divorce might be an unresolved issue and she can use me as a rebound lol. When i knew that it was three years ago i thought she might be over it. After sex on the first date she shared with me her dating and marriage life. She shared with me her home (i moved in) after one week of knowing her. She emotionally manipulated me by telling me her sexual stories (very promiscous). She made it with a stranger in a side street in san frandisco.

After seeing my friends for two times, she was telling them about her dating life. How she went out with this guy from match.com (she escaped her parents and her country to america because her parents were "overprotective" of her after her divorce. She could not tolerate to be alone) .

Everything i told her was used against me in the devaluation phase. I trusted her and thought i could be open as it is mutual.

Ps : i did not use the red flag sign as it would be there in every sentence i have written. How did i ignore this. Go figure

On a side note, I can't believe I got involved with someone who was that promiscuous.   After she revealed a couple of her sex stories early on, I had this sense come over me that I should never go out with her again.  Did I listen?

this is intuition. same thing happened for me but my need for the idealization and my ego (pride and false confidence that i can change her) made my intuition to shut up. i believe that our intuition is our superego and inner voice that guides us in life. we all did not listen to it. be kind to yourself.

I echo that. She told me a few stories since she was a teenager or young girl that I felt them in my gut. I was thinking geez!... .But I stayed and I think sex was a big part of what got me hooked. Her being so liberated and seemingly comfortable with her body and sexuality was a BIG part of the hook. It held a lot of power in my mind. I had to work during the rs to desensitise that area (her and her bed lair), meaning demistifying my thoughts and own projections of power that I had assigned her with in my mind. that was critical in order to unhook myself from it all.

Mine used the personal stuff I told him against me as well, distorting it to his own liking... .one other man did that to me years ago and I suspect he was BPD also. I've had other r/ss with nons and none of them did anything like that!

Exactly!

My ex would talk endlessly about his two ex wives and his last ex girlfriend. He idolized the ex girlfriend and then at times talked disrespectfully of her. I asked him why he felt the need to talk so much about them to me. I felt it was not important especially since it made him angry and ugly. He would go into details about stuff I really preferred not to know.

I also was always told I keep secrets because I didn't tell him everything, even though I had no idea what he wanted to know, past or present. Everything would eventually be throw in my face, so it was a catch ten!

Our second date was two days and two nights long! And like you, as she opened up to reveal some of the extreme difficulties of her life, I also began telling her things about myself that I "didn't know I knew."  There was such warmth and vulnerability in her, so much physical affection and closeness that I began to trust her almost immediately. She suffered such severe social anxiety that she had been living almost as a shut in, and she seemed so grateful to have found someone to talk to. There was never this feeling that she was a manipulator or in genuine--just this lovely, lonely, soulful little girl.

I was so much older than her, but she had also dated a man a few years older than me, and she spoke of him with great affection. She seemed to really care about him, and not at all be the kind to simply eject someone from her life. Her fondness for him totally put me at ease. He was a bipolar professor that had been suffering from major depression, and she claimed he basically shut her out of his life. I felt very sorry for her, because she had tried and tried to make contact with him during his depression. In retrospect, I wonder if she had done something to hurt him. There had been some domestic violence between them when they were both drinking, and I think that's when the relationship came apart. But whatever the cause, her concern for him was one of the reasons I completely lowered my guard. She seemed so benevolent.

She told me of her alcoholic mother, her drug dealing brother, the addictive behavior of her entire family, including herself. I admired my ex for removing herself from her disfunctional family, and putting herself through college with literally zero help from them. She seemed so determined to succeed, hoping to become a social worker, to help people like herself escape the ravages of addiction and poverty. As sixteen, she had been raped by two thirty something neighbors, first one and then the other, who had plied her with drugs and alcohol. She had lived a hard life, but seemed determined to move on, to give something back. Certainly, a person like this had integrity, I thought.

White Knight here all the way, and while there were red flag, including some questioms about her ability to emphasize, none of them seemed to indicate a person capable of deceit or dishonesty. And that's the worst part of BPD: when her dark side broke, I was left completely unprepared and in shock. All this time, all this closeness, all this sharing, and I never knew this person at all.

Mine also shared early on about reasons why his two long term relationships ended, cheating as well as being physically assaulted by both and stabbed. He spoke of fights with exes entailing screaming matches and throwing things. I thought, here is this poor man who is so open and sweet and he's hooked up with these crazy terrible women. I can love him like he deserves... .

Looking back I would give anything to be a fly on the wall of those relationships to find out what actually happened.

My ex shared on a need-to-know basis.  At the start of the r/s he was in victim mode, sharing all of the unpleasant things he had experienced.  (Others were to blame)  At the same time, he confessed the horrible things he had done in his life.  So there was an odd mixture of blaming others, and expressing responsibility.

This was effective and certainly lured me in.  I felt sorry for him. I felt badly that he had been mistreated. 

However, there was a nagging thought in my mind:  Why was he living in the past?  Why hadn't he worked through events that occurred 20+ years ago?  I identified red-flag behavior and I chose to excuse it.  Then the rescuer in me stepped forward.  In my mind, I saw a man admitting to his mistakes, and damaged by painful experiences.

I suggested ways to resolve painful events from his past. I encouraged him to not be so hard on himself. The codependent cycle was underway... .

Omg, that my story! No stabbing, but everything else!

I just find this information and similarities so incredible!


I AM RUNNING LIKE HELL FROM THE NEXT POOR ME GUY! I am going with a zero tolerance stand!

I am not a therapist and I am waving my own white flag of surrender. It is not my job to save the world, only to save myself!

Yes, my BPDexh over shared.  His over sharing wasn't about childhood abuse though.  He wasn't abuse, he was in a severe emotionally non-validating environment - but either way, he was carefully about ripping off the bandages and exposing those wounds.  It definitely eventually DID come to the surface though, and quite frequently.  Instead, he at first expressed what seemed like unique yet healthy vulnerability.  For a man to be so candid and vulnerable seemed refreshing.  After a while his over-sharing was fully rooted in narcissism…and his plentiful memories and willingness to share the same stories of violence and volatility rooted in a "hero complex" was sickening. 

My exBPD showed me excerpts from her psychiatric journal the second time we met.    

And silly me... .I thought: "Wow, in a way it's really mature that she is so open about the fact that she has had issues." Oh my God... .I literally feel like smashing my face into my palm right now. Thankfully, I am so far ahead in my healing process now, I also can't help but find it a little comical now.  

So manipulative on so many levels... .yes, they lure us and draw us in. From the start, my exbfBPD should have won an academy award for his performance. It was our second date, to which he was more than an hour late  red-flag: he couldn't find the restaurant, though it's very well known and about a mile from where he "supposedly" lived.  red-flag I would later learn he was "deviating" to come see me (sneaking out and lying)  red-flag when he was living in a half-way house. So, he arrives to our dinner date very disheveled, very late and considerably shaken (and shaking). Great costuming job! I'm aghast at his appearance for a second date. He sat down, and I asked him what he wanted to order--he really did look like a 4 year old from Les Miserables who had just walked in off the streets of pre-revolutionary Paris. Out of the blue and with no context, he hands me a 3-ring binder with pictures and documentation of a legal case; red-flag you would have thought he was meeting his lawyer red-flag. Over the next two hours, he tearfully told me about a case in which his family set him up; used him; and eventually had him take the fall for some very shady real estate deals. There even were touching pictures of him with his kids who he said he hadn't seen in 3 years.  :'( I was dumbfounded--  But how could he be making this up? He brought me a binder! (Nice prop). I told him I don't judge but that I was pretty freaked out--he was living in a half way house and had just finished a 3 year sentence in prison? I did everything I could to reassure, validate, and calm him. I played my part without even knowing it. So, I'm reeled in right? I always have had a weakness for strays and a desire to fight for the underdog. He takes me to his near empty apartment (because he was living in a halfway house), he kisses me <3 and asks me if I can help him pick out paint colors and decorate. The next day and the next and the next, he began asking "favors."  red-flag Would I come get a key from him at work to let his probation officer in to inspect the apartment? Would I please let the mattress delivery man in? He had a set of keys made for me with a special key ring after only a second date! This was feeling sketchy but rewarding like a charity project. About the third "errand" he asked me to run was meeting him at a car lot where he had the audacity to ask me for money to help him buy a nice SUV--I hardly knew this guy! I indignantly told him NO! I got in my car where he began incessantly calling me. I wouldn't answer. I decided I never would have contact again. He was a con man. In my back seat, was the three ring binder he left me, and I had a set of keys. Days later, I texted him to say I needed to return his materials immediately. My hurt waif boy (nearly 47) sulked out to my car when I arrived at his apartment. He looked angry and confused, etc. when I handed him the binder and told him it was not at all cool to ask for a large amount of money from someone he barely knew. He looked so sad and shamed. I told him I would try to explain why I just stopped answering his calls, and he asked me to come in to talk. He already had me feeling guilty! I had misjudged him and misunderstood him--just like everyone else in his life. The trauma bond worked--so did the binder prop--and so did the running me around on his errands and getting me a set of keys (created a sense of ownership in his trauma). Brilliant all the way around. Soon I reciprocated and began telling him "everything" (part of their strategy). And yes, every intimate morsel was used against me over and over again over the course of a year. Brilliant strategy!

Sorry for "text bombing" this thread. I wrongly assumed that there was NO WAY he would con me to have told me so much--even let me meet his probation officer initially and several times thereafter. Again, like an actor in a play I didn't know I was in; I gave him credibility with his PO (I have some background in the periphery of that world)--and it was bonding me to exbfBPD more and more deeply. He even handed me a series of letters early on: one written from his daughter to the prosecutor. The letter was SCATHING: everything I since learned was true. At the time, he was using the letter to demonstrate how falsely accused he had been. He has not spoken to his daughter since (5 years now). Why would he want me to read that? In a weird way, might they also have been warning us about themselves?

Same thing here. She shared with me extraordinary liberal sexual encounters that at the start I took it as intimacy and I started sharing too (I have done liberal things myself) but as we bonded the same experiences that we shared came back to haunt us. Very uncomfortable and insecure indeed, swimming in a toxic jealousy swamp. I remember showing a bit of jealousy for the first time for her flirting and what not and her response was saying angrily to me 'you have no reason to be jealous, before I met you I wanted to grab every man's balls and now I only have eyes for you... .'. That really put me at ease. Then another time in month 2 she texted me and told me that a male colleague of ours prepared tea for her in a mug saying 'my ladyship' on and telling her that she is a man eater. A bit of a random message in the morning that I didn't know what to make.

She was playing me like a pro... .

My exBPDbf over shared as well. He emailed me what he called a "Love Letter" on my birthday, which was only 12 days into our relationship. We had 3 dates and I left on a business trip to Hawaii.

That letter contained way too much personal information about his childhood, such as, he was not loved as a child, he was sickly, almost died at the age of 8, was a burden to his already overburdened family (8 sibs) because of his health issues and the medical bills. He also talked about wanting to find that perfect love, the bond he longed for, which he never experienced as a child. It went on to say how after meeting me he was reflecting on "his needs" and how I swept into his life like a warm summers rain. How closely connected he felt to me. How I'd never ask him to be the strong one all of the time. (In retrospect, it all there in black n white. However, I didn't know about the BPD until 4 years later.)

I was a long way from home (Hawaii) and alone on my birthday so at the time I felt it was sweet and thoughtful for him to remember my birthday. However, the letter was just way too revealing, too intimate from someone I had just reconnected with (knew him 30 years prior in high school) just 12 days prior. Major red flags went up, but, being the care taker and rescuer, it successfully drew me into him. He portrayed himself as the "victim" and I was going to save him! Not!

So, here I am 4 years later looking back through BPD glasses and clearly understanding what he did, how he pulled me in, gained my sympathy and manipulated me. When I ended it back in June due to unraveling his lies and cheating, he told me he suffered from BPD. When I asked why he waited 4 years to tell me, he responsoned "I am an exceptionally private person when it comes to my past, I don't like to feel vulnerable. I told you because I caused you so much pain. I think it was about time you know little more. Plus, I love you."

I opened up to him during our 4 years together and revealed the emotional and physical abuse I suffered at the hands of my mother. How I was always looking for love in the wrong places in my teenage years, and again after my dicorce in my 30's. Im now late 40's and have learned a lot about myself through this ordeal. Everything I shared with him was used against me. He accused me of cheating, keeping things from him, etc. I know now of course that he was projecting and he was the one who was cheating.

I loved him with all of my heart. I was loyal and faithful to him. He, or rather his disorder destroyed us, our love and almost me. I likely would have ended up in a padded room if I had stayed with him. I'm 2+ months NC and I have good days and bad days. But, I refuse to let what happened define me, or to give up on love!

mine is really big on oversharing. in fact, her online dating profile says she's a rape survivor and she feels like people don't talk about it enough. she will talk about all her personal stuff with almost anyone and it makes them uncomfortable. it's inappropriate. then she'll criticize people (including me!) who want to just have fun, talk about silly things, enjoy themselves. she says they're "shallow" and don't care about the world. she has NO idea that most of us are fully aware of how scary the world is but we choose not to dwell on all those things because life can really be great if you let it. she won't let it. she wants to remain a Professional Victim.