BPDFamily.com

Hi everyone.

I'm sorry if this isn't appropriate to post here as I don't know if the person I'm posting about has a formal diagnosis, but a lot of the patterns of behavior seem very similar and I have been struggling with this for almost a year now.

Everyone else I try to talk to tells me that I'm stupid for not just turning tail and running, but I'm hoping maybe you guys will understand.

This post will be long, so I apologize.

Just over a year ago I met a wonderful man. He was gorgeous, smart, funny, and we got along like we had known each other forever. Best friends instantly. He had a long-distance girlfriend who lived in Canada (we live in LA), and even though I had a crush on him from the beginning, I wanted to be respectful and keep my distance. As someone who was cheated on chronically by my ex-husband, I never wanted to inflict that on another person. But his girlfriend knew about me, and didn't seem to care. He started wanting to hang out more and more, inviting me to go to events with him, and she always knew I was there. She would facetime him every night before she went to bed, and I was almost always there. She was on a sleep medication called Zopiclone that made her kind of loopy, but she still never seemed to have a problem with me being around.

I was so into him, but was keeping my distance. He, however, was starting to be more and more openly flirtatious with me. Then one night, after a couple beers, we were watching a Talking Heads concert and he just dove across the couch and kissed me, hard and passionately.

He felt extremely guilty afterwards, and over the next several days he started opening up about things that were happening in his relationship. His girlfriend was 30 at the time (now 31), unemployed, and lived with her parents in Canada. He paid for most of her bills, including an American cell phone so that they could keep in contact. She came to visit him every few months and stayed for a couple of weeks, and he paid for all of these trips (flights, all entertainment, food, etc while she was there). Even the furniture in his apartment indicated that she had him wrapped around her finger-it was all EXTREMELY girly, and he hated it. But she was convinced that before long he was going to propose to her, and they would get married and she would come live with him in LA, so she had insisted on all of the furniture. He admitted to me that he didn't want to marry her, but didn't know how to tell her. She was also extremely incendiary and had caused rifts between him and several of his friends and even professional colleagues because of her tendency to start arguments. I had noticed this on her twitter-it was an almost constant stream of her arguing with, picking on, or insulting other people. She also didn't seem to have any friends. I asked if there was anyone that she hung out with in Canada, and he said no. Just her parents and sister. She didn't even seem to have any online friends... .just people she argued with. It was very strange. She was also on a cocktail of medications for conditions that he couldn't really specify, including heavy-duty tranquilizers and pain meds. She took 3 percocets a day for "life pain," so that she could function. All of this just seemed like a bunch of red flags, but I didn't feel that it was my place to say anything.

He and I ended up admitting our feelings for each other, and I told him very plainly that the ball was in his court regarding whether he wanted to stay in his relationship or not. I wasn't going to push him either way. He told me that he was pretty sure he wanted to leave her, but he was afraid to. I didn't really understand this-I know that breakups can be hard and messy. I've both been broken up with and broken up with others on many occasions, but you deal with it and you both move on. I asked him why he was afraid, and he said she was "fragile" and he was afraid of hurting her, and didn't know what she might do. I didn't press the issue farther, but that stuck out as a red flag in my mind.

She was due for a visit in a couple weeks (this is now October of 2014) and he was still uncertain about leaving her or not. I told him that I thought it would be a good idea to use her visit as a chance to just spend time with her and evaluate their relationship, and that I would take a step back during this time to give him space to do so. He also agreed that this was a good idea, and she arrived in town in mid-october.

Two days later I got a text from him saying that she really wanted to hang out with me, and was pressing him to invite me over. I told him I wasn't comfortable with that and didn't think it was a good idea, but he said she was insisting, so I said ok, I would come over and watch the walking dead with them. it was... .awkward. She was nice enough, and seemed eager to be friends with me. over the next few days she started sending me messages on facebook, bemoaning the lack of cool people to be friends with in her part of canada and that she was glad to meet someone cool.

it was all very frustrating and confusing for me. I felt bad because I had feelings for him, but she seemed genuinely sweet and nice. I also felt frustrated because he had not yet made up his mind about what he wanted to do. Finally, a couple of days after she left, he called me and told me that he had decided he wanted to pursue a relationship with me, and that he was going to break up with her but he needed time to figure out how. I said okay, and to take all the time he needed. Nearly a month passed before he decided to pull the trigger.

His plan for telling her that the relationship was over seemed so elaborate to me, it was strange. He had to do it on a weekend so he wouldn't have to worry about work. He had to do it over facetime, since that was the only option with her in canada. He seemed like he was mentally preparing for some kind of disaster, and now I understand why.

The day came, and he called me and told me that he was going to call her and break the news, and he would call me after and let me know how things went. I said ok, and that I was there for whatever he needed. He was clearly TERRIFIED.

He had been planning not to tell her that he wanted to pursue a relationship with me, but I thought that honesty would be the best course of action. I've had people leave me for someone else before, and it sucks, but I've also had people do that and not tell me about it, and finding out later sucks worse. So he agreed to tell her.

Hours passed and I heard no word from him. I was getting pretty worried. Finally, about three hours later, a phone call.

He was hysterical. He told me she had broken down, started screaming at him and threatening him, and had started threatening to kill herself by overdosing on her pain meds and tranquilizers. I asked if he had contacted her parents or emergency services. He said he hadn't, that if she killed herself it would be his fault, and he needed to take care of it. I spent several more tense hours waiting while he was on the phone with her, apparently trying to talk her down. Then I started getting messages from her on Facebook. She called me a slut and a homewrecking whore. She said I needed to find my own man, and that it wasn't his fault because I had "coerced" him into leaving her for me. She told me that I should kill myself, and that it was a shame that good people committed suicide while scum like me was allowed to keep living. I blocked her right away, and forwarded her messages to him.

He told me he was sorry, that he didn't know what else to do, and he felt like he had to stay with her. The last straw, he said, was when she threatened to call his boss and try to get him fired from his job. His job was everything to him-she knew that he would be devastated without it. He told me he felt like he didn't have a choice.

I was devastated, not only for my own sake but for his. I felt it was extremely cruel and manipulative to try to force someone to stay in a relationship that they didn't want to be in. I couldn't even understand why she would WANT to be with him after he had told her he was in love with someone else. I tried to get him to see that her threats were empty-that he needed to call her family or whatever the canadian equivalent of 911 was about her suicide threats, that there was absolutely NOTHING she could say to his boss that would make him fire an exemplary employee, but it wasn't getting through to him. He was convinced that she would try to kill herself, and if she did that it would be his fault.

They didn't exactly get back together, but for the next several weeks were in some kind of weird limbo. She told him that he had to remove me from all social media, and he did, but he remained in contact with me. She continued to send me messages-but now that I had blocked her on facebook, twitter, and instagram, she took to sending anonymous messages to my tumblr. She also messaged any of my friends that she could get in contact with, to tell them what awful and disgusting person I was. She maligned me for trying to steal her boyfriend. She then took to twitter and posted my full real name and information (I go by an alias online) in an attempt to get people to come after me or somehow tarnish my reputation. Several of my friends saw the tweet and reported it, and I screencapped it and sent it to him, along with all of her hateful messages. I didn't want to respond to or engage with her in any way, but she just kept taking shots at me in any way she could. He said that he got angry at her for the messages, that he told her off, but for some reason he just couldn't cut off contact. He couldn't disengage.

After she doxxed me on twitter, a strange thing happened. Strangers started to message me-but not with messages of hate. People were coming out of the woodwork to tell me that they, too, had been harassed by this girl. I have not named her yet, so for the sake of this story let's call her Jane. One girl, Kate, messaged me on facebook after seeing my information posted all over Jane's twitter, and told me that she had been harassed by Jane for almost four years. Back in 2011, Jane had developed an infatuation with a man named Bob. Bob and Kate had been in a casual, but non-exclusive, relationship for some time, and Jane knew this. However, Jane made it a point to try to seduce Bob. She dyed her hair blonde because she knew he liked it, things like that, and then one night at a conference he mistakenly and drunkenly slept with her. Afterwards, she wanted to be in a relationship with him. He didn't, and told her as much. A short time later, he and Kate decided to make their relationship exclusive. Thus launched Jane's tirade against Kate that would last for years, even after Jade started seeing the current boyfriend. She posted a countdown to when she predicted Kate and Bob would break up on her blog. She drew pictures of herself in bed with Bob, and of Bob killing her with a gun that shot heart-shaped bullets, with the caption " Your love was like a drive-by shooting." She mocked kate and called her names, and consistently messaged Bob about what a mistake he was making and how good she and he would be together. This went on for FOUR YEARS. Other girls came forward to tell me that Jane had accused them of "bullying" when they had contacted her parents because they saw her posting suicide threats on Tumblr.

Finally, Jane told the boyfriend that she would accept his decision to break up with her if he would never see or speak to me again. Just like every other time she made a demand, he acquiesced to her-but he lied. We didn't see each other, but we stayed in contact. He would text and call me every day. I loved him, and I felt so horrible for him... .i didn't feel like it would be right to walk away and abandon him, even though I knew that's what I should do. I knew that if I walked away, he would end up back with her, and that was not only heartbreaking but scary. I could see now that his relationship was abusive, and as a victim of an abusive relationship myself, I know what it's like to have friends abandon you when you won't get out. He was just so deep in the manipulation that I didn't know what to do. It seemed dangerous to try to yank him out of it, like waking a sleepwalker. He had to make the choice to leave himself.

So I tried to be there for him, and I kept loving him from arm's length, even though it was driving me deep into depression. We would talk every day. Sometimes he would drive by my apartment before or after work (we live only 5 minutes apart) to give me a hug or kiss or to tell me that he loved and missed me. He would bring me snacks and gifts, but still, we couldn't spend any time together. They weren't together, but they also weren't exactly apart.

(continued)

This went on for almost four months, and during that time, she continued to harass me. I had her blocked on every platform possible, but she would log out of her accounts in order to access my posts. She would take shots at me almost daily-about my hair, or my clothes, or my work (I am an artist, and she touts herself as a "Professional" artist even though she doesn't really do any art or make any money from it, and she would constantly insult any work that I posted). She continued to regularly sent me anonymous vitriol through tumblr. I refrained from looking at her posts because I knew they would upset me, but Kate would screencap her posts about me in order to show them to him. He acknowledged that her behavior was terrible, but she hid all of this behavior from him. She never mentioned me or Kate to him. She knew that he didn't follow her twitter or tumblr and that the things she posted about me there would go unnoticed by him. She put on a completely different persona to him than she did to anyone else.

Long story still mostly long, this went on for months. Finally, he decided that he needed to bring the hammer down for good and end things with her permanently. His feelings for me were only intensifying, and he wasn't happy with her, and didn't want to marry her, which he knew was her goal. He told me that in order for the breakup to "stick," she needed to believe that it had nothing to do with me. She needed to think that I was out of his life for good and that their relationship had simply run its course and that was why he was deciding to leave her. I told him that this was ridiculous and there was no way she would believe it, especially because to her knowledge I had already been out of contact with him for months, and she was continuing to harass me online almost daily. But he insisted, and he planned her a trip to LA in late July. He told me that he was going to be kind to her and try to show her a good time before telling her that it was over. I thought this was monumentally stupid, and told him as much. The only good thing to do, it seemed to me, would be a clean break with no more contact, but he insisted on trying to let her down gently.

While she was in town, our contact was minimal, since I could only talk to him during work hours. He couldn't talk to me while he was at home or on weekends, because she would be watching. But he assured me daily that he was sticking to his guns, that he was going to leave her permanently. He also told me that she had been very insistent on having sex with him, and that they had slept together twice. Honestly, I didn't really care, because sex is only minimally important to me. So I let it slide.

While she was in town, my cat unexpedtedly passed away. It was horrible and traumatic. I tried to call him for support, but because it was outside of work hours, he didn't answer. The next morning, however, he called me at 8am and said he was outside my house. I was a mess, having not slept all night, my eyes puffy and swollen from crying. I went outside and he wrapped me up in a giant hug, then got down on one knee and put a twist tie around my left ring finger. He told me that he was sorry for not being there for me, and for all of the times over the past year that he should have been there for me but wasn't because he was afraid of her, and that it would never happen again. He told me that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me, and that he was going to set this right and make up for all the pain and missed opportunities. The gesture was such a sweet and genuine one that I was, temporarily, happy.

She was due to leave a couple days later, and it was time for him to break the news to her. He told me that he was going to do so, and was going to try to remain calm but firm.

He called me some time later and told me that not only had his technique not worked (surprise), but that she had pressed him until he told her the truth (that he was indeed planning to be with me), and that she had then refused to get on her return flight home (which he had paid for). Not only that, but she had also cancelled a flight for a few weeks later, when she was supposed to fly from Ontario to San Francisco for a retreat (someone else had paid for that flight as well). Knowing full well that he was too nice to strand her at the airport or punt her out on the street, she figured that he would be forced to let her stay with him for the intervening three weeks.

I was FURIOUS, mostly at how entitled her behavior was, but also at him for enabling it and not immediately taking her to a hotel or something. But it was my birthday, and I was determined to try to have a good time, so I told him to ___ing figure it out.

I guess they fought for the next day or so, but he (admirably) held firm in his desire to be free of their relationship. Realizing that she wasn't going to win, I guess, she demanded that he buy her a flight home for two days later. He shelled out thousands of dollars to not only buy her a last-minute flight back to Ontario, but also to replace her flight from Ontario to SF for her retreat. Finally, she left.

We thought we were free.

She kept messaging him telling him that she hated him and never wanted anything to do with him ever again, and continuing to tell him what a horrific person he was, but after a couple days those messages died down.

About a week after she left, I got a series of messages on Tumblr from her. Not anonymous this time. She told me that I should leave him because he was a liar and a cheat who had told her he was planning to dump me, that our relationship was doomed to fail, and that he would leave me as soon as he found someone more interesting. She said she was just trying to look out for me so that I didn't suffer the same fate as her. I politely responded and told her that I appreciated the concern, but I didn't buy that she was saying these things in good faith, and that if she despised him and me as much as she professed to the the best thing she could do would be to back off and watch the relationship disintegrate as she was certain it was going to. She stopped messaging me (but continued to message him and tell him how horrible and worthless he was), but I figured that was that.

Then, about two weeks after she had left, he came home from work white as a ghost and shaking. I asked him what was wrong, and after struggling to even form words, he told me that she had called him and told him she was pregnant. She said she had gotten two positive home tests and a third positive urine test at the ER. This had apparently all just happened that day.

I tried to calm him down, and asked if he had actually seen the tests. He said that she had shown him the two positive home tests, but he had not seen her actually take them. He had no evidence of the ER test. The minute the words "I'm pregnant" were out of her mouth, he said, she had started demanding that he dump me, because she intended to keep the baby and his being with me was "disgusting, embarrassing and disrespectful." She continued to make this demand over and over, and always diverted to it whenever he asked her for additional details about the pregnancy.

This was the night before she was leaving for her retreat, and was going to be gone for a week. There would be no way for her to get more tests during the time she was away, conveniently. She continued to demand that he dump me. He would ask her to make an appointment for a blood test as soon as she got back... .she would sidestep and demand that he dump me. He would ask her how she planned to take care of the baby as an unemployed 31-year-old whose parents were on disability, she simply said it was "taken care of" and then went back to demanding that he dump me. He told her that he wasn't ready and didn't want to be a father and that maybe they should talk about it, she insisted that she was going to keep it no matter what and then went back to demanding that he dump me. Despite her constant insistence that he dump me, though, she also insisted that she didn't want to get back together with him and didn't want anything to do with him outside of what was necessary in caring for the child. If that was the case, why the insistence that he dump me? Why was it so important that he had to do it NOW, before she had even had any definitive tests?

There were lots of red flags that made me think she might be lying about the pregnancy in order to get him back, or at the very least, to get him to leave me. THe most major one was that she had been on the Depo Provera shot, one of the most effective forms of birth control (almost on par with sterilization) for years, and had bragged about not having periods because of it. Not only was it very unlikely (though still possible) that she could get pregnant on the shot, she told him that she was 2-3 weeks pregnant. How would she know that if she didn't have a period and couldn't tell if she was late or had missed it? She simply said she had been feeling unusually tired, and her sister (who has been trying to conceive for some time) jokingly suggested that she might be pregnant, so they had gone then and there to buy the tests and she had taken them in the wal-mart bathroom. He has not talked to her sister to confirm this. She claimed that she had already told her parents, and somehow in the course of less than 24 hours these elderly disabled people had figured out how to care for an unexpected child.

He was panicking. An absolute mess. Sobbing in my arms. Claiming that he didn't want to be a dad, he wasn't ready to be a dad, but that he couldn't abandon the child if there was one. He had struggled with feeling abandoned by his own father (a fact she was aware of) and would never want to inflict that on a child. He said he had to try to be the best father he could, even if he wasn't ready to be. Naturally, this would mean the end of our relationship, because there was no way he could focus on me and a baby at the same time.

Over the course of her trip, she continued to message him almost daily, demanding that he break up with me. Over and over, she made this demand. He said he wasn't ready to make any choices like that until she had a blood test to confirm the pregnancy, but she just kept insisting that she IS pregnant and that him being with me would be a barrier between them and he needed to dump me right now.

Two days after she told him she was pregnant, she sent me a message asking if he had told me. I said yes, he had. She then started insisting to ME that we needed to break up. I told her that I was just trying to be there and be supportive of him, because he wasn't handling the news well. She insisted that our relationship was bad and toxic and we needed to break up. I told her that if she indeed was really pregnant, it was pretty much inevitable that we would break up anyway, and that I saw no reason for her to continue to contact me. She hasn't since.

She then started insisting that he tell his mom about the pregnancy. She said she had told her entire family (though none of them have attempted to contact him, so whether they know is not confirmed). He said he didn't want to tell his mom until he had the blood test results, because he didn't want to stress her out unnecessarily, and kindly asked that she not push the subject any more until she had time to go to the doctor. She then went behind his back and talked to his mom anyway. She apparently sent his mom and extremely long message that was almost 90% rant about me and how bad he and I were for each other, including a photo of me that she thought was incriminating (an old modeling photo of me from 2006 where my butt is partially exposed-mind you, this girl has pictures of herself in her underwear on Instagram). His mother, I should note, also thinks that she's lying.

She got back from her trip two days ago, and today went and got a requisition for a blood test that she is apparently going to have done tomorrow. In the meantime, he and I are taking a break from seeing each other because ___ all of this. I'm at my wits end, I'm intensely depressed, and I can barely function. Just when I thought there was a light at the end of the tunnel of almost a year of this, she drops another bomb. And of course, there's the lingering fear that maybe she really IS pregnant. It's not impossible. But right now, all of the evidence we have points to either the tests being false positives that she decided to run with in order to get us to break up (the day before she took the tests, she had been to the doctor for a bladder infection, and blood or protein in your urine can cause a false positive test. She is also on a medication that has been shown tosometimes cause false positives), or being completely fake (you can buy them on the internet), or being her sister's (As mentioned earlier, her sister and her husband have been trying to conceive for some time). As this is the ONLY concrete evidence we have right now, it's really hard to go on, but he says he can't take that chance. If she does turn out to be really pregnant, he doesn't want to be that ass who treated her like ___ and accused her of lying.

So now... .we wait. I told him that he needs to ask to speak to the doctor, and to be mailed a copy of her test results, which is his legal right as the father. There is still a chance that she really is pregnant, which is terrifying to think about, and I can imagine even more terrifying for him. If the test comes back negative, though, I'm willing to bet that she comes up with some other condition to explain it-like cancer or some other serious illness (she has already told him that this might be the case if she gets a negative result), and she will try to use that as another hook to keep him around, because nobody wants to be that ass who would leave a sick or dying person.

I know I should just leave and wash my hands of all of this. But I love him, and I also don't want to leave him to endure this alone. This is the man who told me he wants to spend the rest of his life with me. I can't just walk away now, after all of this.

Thank you all for reading this. I really hope that you can offer some insight.

Hi alittlescared,

All I can say is WOW... .

Iam so sorry that you are going through this.

My own dd20 is undxBPD but  has behaved very similar to your b/fs exgf. It seems that they truly believe that they have a right to be with a particular person and will go to extremes to keep them. My own dd has physically fought with other girls who have shown an interest in her b/f and has had restraining  restraining orders placed on her... As you are finding out they when pwBPD are desperate not to be abandoned they will stop at nothing. Faked pregnancy tests results,  faked baby scan pictures, faked miscarriages, or abortions... .My dd has done some of these things too inorder to keep a guy interested in her.

M

Sorry pc probs... .

I would advise you to advise your man by all means when it comes to communicate with his exgf but continue to remain out of the picture as much as you can when it comes to communicating with this girl. It seems that she will stop at nothing.Beware of becoming triangulated. I would also say that he is best to go LC with her and only communicate through email if possible. That way he will can all emotion out of his communication and he will also have documented proof.

Hopefully this girl is not pregnant and even if she produces "proof" that she is, unless your man is there and sees it with his own 2 eyes he still needs to be cautious. He also needs to know and understand that if this girl threatens to hurt herself that it isnt his fault She is ill and it is her illness speaking.

It is so easy to fake things these days that iam not saying to take it with a pinch of salt but try not to get so wrapped up in what this girl says. She likes drama and is a manipulator who uses it to get what she wants, so tell him to play it cool. I find that when i do this with my own dd she usually gets bored and goes onto something else.

The internet makes it very easy to trick people into believing what they want using cut and paste. Also reading books and joining a support network like this would help him to see that he is not alone.

I would also reccomend finding  a good counsellor in pwBPD would be benefiical to both of you to. Only recently my dd's exbf is getting help from a counsellor in Pd,s. Before that he told me that he felt too ashamed and felt foolish to get help. I have actually seen him cry over the situation and how impossible dd makes it to co-parent with her and belief me I wouldnt wish it on anyone.

I wish you all the best.