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How long were you in a relationship with a BPD before it finally fell apart and the BPD left you?

I know there are the short breakups we have all had, but how long till THEY left you without a recycle for at least about 3-5 months.

Obviously I’m just trying to see what is the average life span of a BPD relationship.

Curious, are the short 2-4 month relationships just rebounds from longer ones ?

thx

It doesn't take long for them to start devaluing you in some capacity.  Personally the 'elationship'  ( I like to call it that) part lasted a couple three months and then she started picking apart everything I did and said.   That doesn't mean it fell apart because three additional years went by before we supposedly talked for the last time yesterday.   

I was trying to make this into a poll !

How ?

2 years.  sorry... .:)

 I like that, very good!

Mine was 3 months of good, although the good was peppered with red flags that I ignored and I didn't trust her.  I broke up with her, which lasted a week, we got back together, 3 months of so-so, never the same, and 3 months of sht I shouldn't have put up with for more than a week, and then I left her.  Sometimes I feel unworthy of being here, since folks here have been married, had kids, and racked up decades of time with their borderline.  Other times I say fck it, the damage was done in a short period of time and it still hurt like hell, all of the info here and elsewhere and everyone's posts speak to my ex to a tee, so it is what it is.

16 months. I miss her everyday.

For me the "relationship" lasted for 6 months.

For a couple of months before that we were friends and one day she started to persue me pretty intensely.  I guess I was flattered and liked the attention so I decided to give it a go.

First couple of months I was pretty cool on it,  then one day I got "the talk" where she told me all this terrible stuff that had happened to her and how she was so terrified she was going to lose me.  I told her that she would never lose me and I loved her back.

The next 4 months were hell.  All of a sudden I went from the most important person in her life to someone who she only seemed to want to see when she was bored,  she turned all passive agressive on me and just became a nightmare. 

I put up with a lot of crap from her but I certainly put my foot down at times and called her out on her behaviour. To be honest I think this was what lead to me being replaced.  The guy before me lasted 2 years but never stood up for himself,  she cheated on him a bunch and just treated him like complete trash and he just took it all.

In my case I'm glad I stood up for myself and escaped from the nightmare.  Her last ex became a drug addict and has not recovered from his experience,  and my replacement seems to be experiencing extreme psychological problems already.  She really is a dangerous parasite.

16 yrs.

Together for 5 before the kids arrived. Then it started slowly unravelling after our first was born then drastically after our second was born.

Ex started doing drugs after his grandfather died.  Then got clean tjen started drinking.  Then started cheating.

I have been seperated for 6 months. He is low functioning but had to keep the kids safe.

It all sucks. Especially with kids.

I know I can't vote more than once, haha... but Technically i've been left about 7 times.  And each time she leaves, its after a 4-6 month period.

In my rs I had about 4 good months then things started to go down hill and quickly but very subtly. When the ship really started to sink she had painted her dad black so he got the brunt of it.  Once she had not seen him in a while she painted me black but still needed me while she looked for new attachments to paint white.  

In my experience it seems with BPDs there is always someone painted black somewhere and if they don't recieve the drama from that person painted black to let them know they are attached they will seek it out somewhere else.

Around 2 or so years, knew her 5 r 6years...

we broke up and I got silent treatment 8 months after she has came off prosac

So i nearly woulndt count my time when she on meds, as once she came off them was the real 'her' if you will

I think the damage for people not involved for years is not necessarily more or less than someone who has been in the relationship for less time.  I think more of it has to do about how you open up to them and how deep you allow the attachment to go and how far reaching it is into ones life.

The first rage happened at around the 2-3 month mark. She then acted kind of normal for about 4 more months. I moved in at the 7 month mark and then I was getting a rage about once every month with the detached protector silent treatment a couple times a month. About a year in the withdrawal of sex started while the rages and pointless arguments increased in frequency. Slowly at first, but it became more and more prevalent at time went on. Then about 2.5 years into the relationship, she quit her job, quit her Zoloft cold turkey, split black all of her friends from her previous job, split black her 17 yo son and kicked him out, started cheating on me, broke up with me and told me to find a home. At that point she "flipped the switch" and I lived in hell for the last 2 months of the relationship until I moved out. So from the time she quit her job and meds up until she "flipped the switch" was from April 9th to July 14. So she transformed into a different person over a 3 month period. Even though she was having all of these issues, I still never saw it coming because I had nothing to do with any of the things she was going through. I tried to support her and all she did was freak out on me. Hopefully she's doing better now, I don't know.

That would be me sir, hahaha. Hell, that may be the reason that I lasted 3 years and all of her previous relationships for the past 10+ years haven't lasted more than 6 months. Gee, thanks Infern0, now I feel like complete trash, lol... .

Bottom line being pwBPD is toxic. If you were idolized, devalued, cut off without warning and painted black after genuinely caring about someone, the damage is done regardless of how long the relationship lasted.

Our last relationship ended after 8 weeks, this was 16 years after our initial bu.

I agree Blim.  I'm painted black right now because of major rejection I tossed her way two weeks ago.  She's also on a dating service (having no real luck) getting plenty of N-supply as all BPD require in some fashion so those complete strangers are white right now. 

I know my ex is capable of anything so when she tossed out the 'restraining order' comment yesterday I took it to heart.  She's particularly vindictive when her core shame creeps up so I plan on NC period.  She's an incredibly troubled person and with major off the charts alcohol abuse the last 5 years or so it's really magnified her BPD personality, and even though she is sober at the moment she  isn't the same person as she was with just the run of the mill BPD.  I truly believe an addiction with that personality makes it much worse overall.

Please, more votes needed.

Thx

First 14 years were awesome.

Then three years of Hell.

She left a year ago.

So, 17?

We were together for about 3 years.  Now that I have more knowledge of what I was dealing with under my belt, there were signs from the get go.  In hindsight had I knew what I know now, I would have pushed her to get help or hung my hat up.  I think we all feel that way.

The first year - year and a half was complete joy.  We were figuring each other out and growing in love.  After that, we slowly started unraveling.  We never really fought though we were excellent at bickering.  Her life started plummeting.  Losing jobs, facing legal woes, and I was just standing there asking myself what the heck was going on.

It wasn't until I was left there with my heart still beating in my hands that I said to myself, "What just happened is not normal".  I started doing research and trying to understand et voila... .here I am.

Get out of my brain sir. You're stealing my story. Except for our lousy dysfunctional sex life. But then again, when you're with someone that you love. The quantity and quality of sex can be overlooked to an extent... .

The relationship was never stable, but i would say around month 3 she started displaying the full BPD package(mood swings, push/pull etc.) Lasted around 4/5 months.

my relationship lasted 3 years, and I ended it with her after only one recycle that lasted 2 months... .

my ex has a pattern of nothing but unicorns and rainbows for about 6 months to a year... .meanwhile she is cheating infrequently, but definitely, this whole time... .

then the wheels start to fall off, as she realizes she has completely duped this other person into actually falling in love with her... .and she cannot handle that, so psychologically and emotionally she 'checks out', but never has the balls to just sever ties and save face... .

my ex is the quintessential waif, a coward who lives in eternal denial, victimhood, and martyrdom 

Oh the lovely waif. I can relate.  I was waifed as well. 

Well the first time he left was in our 1st year of marriage, second time was in our 19th year. We are now in our 25th year and I left this time. So I guess I could vote several times.  lol

Ding, ding, ding, ding, winner winner, chicken dinner. Ah yes, sounds like the old, "I love you, but I'm not in love with you" cop out BS excuse.

I've noticed that in the longer term BPD relationships. Around the 3 year mark seems like fairly common. But then again, I think that I read somewhere that out of ALL relationships, 3 years seems like a point where a lot of couples break up for some reason. I wonder what the significances of that are?

…so how do you count seven recycles... ?  There were multiple  's that I ignored from inception.  And all kids of ‘hints’ I’d now recognize.  First full-blown BPD fit was likely 9 months into it.  Total time, 3.5 years... .

But with all the reconnects, it just fell apart in slow motion   

My relationship with my ex lasted for 3 years and 2 weeks...

…same here :), 7 times, as best I could keep track... .  But after each reconnect we’d last for shorter periods, almost a mathematical countdown: 9 months, 5 months, 3, 2, 1, 4 weeks, 2 weeks…  Too much scar tissue and a total lack of trust, likely on both sides.

But we’ve never had ‘closure’ … unless her letter (after my emailing her to pay the money she owed me) demanding I “Cease & Desist” counts as closure!  Or would that have been blown by her texting me 2 weeks later to ask about ‘my family.’  Crazy Crap

Back and forth back and forthover the course of a year... .

longest ge stayed with me all at once was 3 months! sad.

myfirst BPD broke up w me but never truly brokeup...

mostly raged verbally abused then changed her mind.

that relationship was 4 years

My relationship was 3 years, and the amount of break ups and make ups I cannot count. I just kept going back. I think it was her beauty and seductive ways.

The verbal abuse started after about 2 months, because I never wanted to give her money to go on an overseas trip to visit her mother. At that stage she was unemployed, and I was paying all her bills.

She kept all my "wrong doings" filed in her brain, and with every argument always repeated them from day 1 of our relationship. Not knowing anything about Borderlines, I often told her she must find a way to control her bad mood. Then eventually I went and googled : girlfriend with bad mood, and I was shocked. She wanted a baby, and we could also set up a wedding date. Yet I knew I had to get out, but I was addicted. The final wake up was when she attacked me with the bread knife. Even this was my fault, but you could have guessed that, right... .?

I eventually left, knowing this time it is over. It has been 2 months now, and I am starting to get over it. But I still miss her.

Sadly, I was replaced within 2 weeks.

My relationship has been over for about 7 weeks now (she's been with my successor 15 weeks now... .8 week overlap! yay! ) I have not reached that 3-5 month threshold yet... .Here's how my 13 months went down:

1. 15 weeks of big time honeymoon idealization (dopamine at dangerously high levels);

2. 2 weeks of her on walkabout; make up/misunderstanding/my fault apparently (what?);

3. 4 weeks of normalcy (if that's even possible)

4. 2 weeks of devaluation (just in time for the holidays and a big New Year's blow off);

5. 1 week of me walking away;

6. 1 week of her kicking and screaming... i love you (subsequently taking her back because I loved her too and I was a spineless chump)

7. 4 weeks of weird push/pull ending with her not able to be in a relationship - so I walked... .

8. 4 weeks of no contact on my part... .she kept up contacting and escalated to bunny boiling levels

9. 1 week of reconciliation (did I mention me being a chump)

10. 3 weeks of honeymoon-esque bliss

11. 10 weeks of okay-ness mixed with some weird push-pull thing (started to set boundaries towards the end)

12. 5 weeks of devaluation (new guy starts a texting frenzy. Setting boundaries=New guy appears? coincidental?)

13. 1 week of I break up with her, she drives up to my house at 2 AM begs, pleads, offers sacrifices, and other fun things. We hang out, she goes home and subsequently ignores me for 3 days and then breaks up with me. (I guess it had to be her idea. So original of her)

14. 1 week of silence

15. 3 weeks of late night "come over's" I resisted the temptation all but about 4 times... .come on, I'm a guy.

16. Crickets... .chirp chirp (my depression begins)

Does any of this sound familiar? People say she will be back. I really doubt it at this point... .Thoughts?

Basically it seems most people get a honeymoon period or 3 or 4 months, after which a normal relationship either fizzles out or progresses into something more stable and longer term, but in our case it turns into a weird nightmare that we feel unable to walk away from.

I think a lesson is that things aren't always meant to last and people are sometimes just meant to appear in order to teach you something. If mine had fizzled out at the 3 month mark, i think i could look back on it as something fun that helped me grow and experience new things, instead of the grim memory i now have of 2 years of misery. A lesson for me is that when things break, accept it and move on.

TWENTY TWO YEARS... .then his mask fell off.

Spent the last 3 years trying to make it make sense, heal the marriage, etc.

6 months ago I started reading, researching... .

It's not me. I am not the failure... .nothing I could do would make things right.

And there was no turning back.

So, a total of 25 years before I threw him out, and started really, healing.

Praise the Lord his mask, fell off. SO MANY things make sense today... .that made no sense, for YEARS.

I'm dating a man who has a uBPDew so I 'll vote for him.

Married 19 years.  First half lots of red flags, issues with lying, issues with money & hypochondria.

At about the mid point of the marriage her mom died (ultimate abandonment).  She talked to her mom everyday... .we think mom helped keep uBPDxw behaviors in check.  So when mom died she really went off the deep end becoming less and less functional.

They separated 17 years in.  The divorce took 2 years! 

Haha Fred, actually it's mam.  That makes me sound ancient though -_-  I agree about the overlooking segment, boy did I ever.

You know :)  as difficult as this is for any of us, you folks are a hoot to spend time with!  (Any thoughts on an annual Non Convention?)


... .you had me backtracking to your previous sentence, yes - no doubt!  I remember the same: I’d insert a boundary, she’d play (reluctantly) compliant; but behind my back she was schemin


She will reappear in some form, text, porch, parking lot, party… they’re Stalkers, too.  We know what the new guy’s in for - we even know the timeline!  Be prepared

This is good.

I was sure that most relationships with a BPD were short. But there are quite a few long term as well.

Please keep voting.

Again my question:

Which relationship is the rebound ?

Can a rebound last 2 years... .or are they usually just a few months ?

So far so good. Almost 2 months b/u and 34 days NC. Think Im safe. I dont think she will contact me ever again.

Does the replacement usually get the same timeline or less or more time?

It must be exhausting for these people with severe traits. Can they truly believe the next one will be their permanent prince?  Then again I'm 47 and single!  At least I had a 14 year marriage and two beautiful kids.

Looking at the poll results I m a little surprised that about 15% of people voting had been in a relationship of 10 years or longer.   I think that proves that there is much variance in the degree of the disorder... .or there is more people like us that can put up with it than I thought.   

No telling going forward. But looking at my ex's past. For 10 years +, she hadn't had a relationship that lasted for more than 4-5 months. There were only a handful of relationships where she introduced the person to her kids, family, and friends. Most of them weren't relationships, they were secretive friends with benefits. These were people that she was sneaking around with. Reliable sources tell me that before I came around, my ex always left her kids at her parents house and was not around a lot of the time. What she was doing, nobody knows. Probably slutting around.

When I came around she started keeping her kids more and doing family type things. More like a typical type relationship. When I went by there to pick up my mail a month ago, her son told me that he hadn't met new supply yet. She's seeing him for 2-3 months now. They have no public Facebook interaction between them on her page except him sporadically liking some of her posts. Before I left for good, she told me that they were just friends and she doesn't want a relationship. So unless somethings changed in the last few weeks, new supply seems to be one of her secret "sex buddies" that nobody knows about.

On the flip side. Although we went to elementary school together, I hadn't seen her in 20 years. But I met her kids the day after I met her for drinks. I met her family within a week or two. Our relationship lasted 3 years +/-. So in my case I don't think the replacement will last that long, but who knows? The biggest questions that I have is why did I last so long compared to everyone else in the past 10 years? Either at some point she actually liked me, I'm a weak idiot that likes being a doormat, or both. Flip a coin... .

I think it has more to do with how much we will put up with and also the severity of their illness.  I know that everything was "fine" in my relationship until I started asking questions and tightened up my boundaries.  Of course "fine" is relative.  Their was never anything normal about the relationship, but I was fresh out of a marriage and she was basically a FWB for the first year and a half.  She finally got her hooks in me around Year two and I became more possessive, needy and aware of her lies, manipulation and cheating.   

I think you're right. In my opinion, my ex is mid level severity, high functioning, and underachieving. You know what Waifed? She is the one that always lost her temper with me. I only really lost my temper 4-5 times and when that happened she wouldn't engage with me. She just went into detached protector mode and continued what she was doing, almost like she was scared of something. But when she lost her temper with me, I always tried to resolve the conflict with her. Most of the time there was a stalemate and I wound up shuting down and withdrawing. Then I always had to be the one that was the first to come back and "break the silence" and walk on eggshells. That was our dynamic.  

Fred, my r/s was nearly an identical dynamic.  How long did you stay together?  How long Did her next r/s (if there was one) last?

I never said a damn word. Either blew it off with humor, apologized or said nothing. Until the final treat me special or else made me snap and go NC for a few days to sort it out and ask her to go to counseling. She said she finally knew what she wanted, dumped me and couple days later, new guy on board. I was such an idiot. Tried to make it work, I really did. To the best of my ability, I wasn't good enough. Just wasn't.

Six years in total, including several break ups/ make ups, the longest of which was 3 months long.

She cheated on the father of her first child with five guys at work that I know of (over a period of about two years before our r\s started), before finally leaving him for me.  . That obviously should have been my first clue.

I did ask her about it, but she said they had been apart when she'd hooked up with those other guys.   .

That he had cheated on her too & was abusive. Told me to stop holding her past mistakes against her.  .

I gave her the benefit of the doubt, figured maybe she was young & naïve, letting guys use her for sex. It was unfair of me to judge her since I happened to know her history & she didn't know mine. I felt sorry for her & wanted to treat her better than ebveryone before me.

Anyway the first three or four months of our r\s were great. We started being intimate from our first date   & she was saying "I love you" after a month.   

Ofcourse she waited until a couple of weeks into our r/s to finally break up with          him, at my insistence   because I didn't want to sneak around, or share.    .

From then on I drove her home from work every day, she was at my place every weekend, twenty e-mails & texts a day, and after 3 or 4 months, I started to feel a bit smothered.

She was very clingy & I wasn't used to that in a r/s.

I suggested we spend one weekend apart and she flipped out; raged and cried & disappeared from home for that whole weekend, her mom called me frantic asking if I knew where she was.

She re-appeared on Monday morning, saying she'd gone to a friend's house because she was "stressed out."

No expanation as to why she didn't tell anyone where she was or why her phone was off the whole time.   

A couple of months later, we had another disagreement, again about spending too much time together (I felt guilty that she was not spending much time with her daughter because of me)

Again rage & tears, this time she locked herself in the bathroom with a huge carving knife, threatening to kill herself because I didn't really love her & she was a bad mother etc. Massive  . I had to kick my own bathroom door down after an hour or trying to talk her out. From then on, I was walking on eggshells, watching my words & doing all I could not to upset her again.

Not long after that there was the "surprise/miracle" pregnancy (she initially swore she was on the pill, only much later admitted she wanted us to have a baby to make sure that I would never leave her).

Thereafter we started living together & the rages, emotional meltdowns & drama became a regular thing. We'd be fine for a couple of months and then she would erupt like a volcano for one reason or another. Her family, me, the baby, people at work, whatever.

I thought I could live with it, help her deal with her emotions better, thought (hoped) she'd mature & mellow eventually, but ofcourse she never did.

Then a second "surprise" baby, this time to ensure we would get married. 

The final straw for me was finding out she was busy with one of her married exes behind my back.

I believe it depends on the personality of the nonBPD partner. Those who set boundaries from the start stand a better chance of a longer honeymoon primarily because it's done in the idealization/mirroring phase. Yet on the contrary this could backfire if boundaries are tested and the non has a zero tolerance for BS. Those who set no boundaries are the hardest hit because they get walked on and still remain in the game. When it's finally over the carnage is aweful. I know from experience

Winner, winner, chicken dinner. Same here. No boundaries,  got folded like a cheap suit 16 months later. Valuable lesson.

We were together 36-38 months. I'm not exactly sure when it started or ended, lol. There was a strong push/component to our relationship, but we never did the break up/make up thing. She's the type that once she puts someone out of her life, she's done with them. Although she's talked about her past boyfriends at times. From what I can tell, she doesn't think about them all that much. They are just another name on a list in somewhere in the back of her head.

As far as her new r/s, I'm not sure. She friended him on FB in May. She split me in late July. I Moved out in late September. I'm not sure what kind of r/s they have. She said that they are just friends. They don't really have any FB activity between each other. So they may not be in a relationship. Maybe she's just slutting around with him on the down low. Other than a couple texts, I haven't had any contact with anyone, so I'm just guessing at all of this.