BPDFamily.com

RE: https://bpdfamily.com/content/how-borderline-relationship-evolves

I wasn't exposed to much beyond the seduction phase and the clinger phase. We came apart too soon. I saw some hate, but nothing enduring. I should count myself fortunate, but I remain shaken by what I saw. On the second-last time I saw her, she called my friends into question, and she insinuated on more than one occasion that I should hang out with her recently acquired friends instead. Is this to be expected in BPD? I haven't any idea of her designs beyond separating me from friends. I broke things off soon after, but that much still disturbs me.

How much of this is me projecting my fears? I've really been messed up by this. I am so naive.

bb

Consider yourself lucky.

If this person does exhibit traits of BPD, get away and don't look back.  They need to help themselves and chances are, they won't.  Whatever negative experiences and insight you gained from this experience, treat it as just that, a learning experience.  Consider yourself lucky that you didn't entangle yourself in a multi year/decade roller coaster like many of the folks on here have.  

BPD aside, if the relationship triggered uneasy feelings within you, and you felt there was unrealistic or non-existent room for growth, then that is your instincts sniffing out some type of sludge.  It's your body feeling out your environment.  :)on't ignore it, listen to it.

To comment on the seducer phase:

That article matches my situation to a tee.  She relentlessly pursued me even thought I told her for months and months on end that I did not want anything serious.  She felt an "immediate" connection to me and I did not feel that (red flag ignored by me).  Once she got me, it's exactly when the come here/go away games began among the other countless oddities that came to light as she opened up to me.  It's also the exact time she started having "second thoughts."  It hindsight, the game was over for her and she is more interested in the chase rather than the capture.

Thank you. These are sober words.




Yes. Precisely.

Borderlines fear abandonment, it's the core of the disorder, so it's common for borderlines to try and isolate their partners from outside influences, and your friends likely represented a threat to her.  Her recently acquired friends were likely people she had the kind of relationship she wanted with them, and if it changed they wouldn't be friends anymore.

If your gut feel was telling you something it was likely right, we can lose touch with our gut feel once we get fully emotionally enmeshed with a borderline because it results in us being ungrounded and off center, a consequence of being close to someone with a mental illness.  It doesn't sound like you had the conversation about why she wanted to isolate you from your friends, you left instead, but it would have been interesting to hear the response, it would be common for her to make it your fault, and she may have gotten you to question yourself, and that's a path you don't want to go down.

So when you say you were messed up by it, how do you feel now?

This question is difficult to answer. There are so many feelings, and they're still in flux. I'll describe one. This experience undermined my trust in my own judgment about prospective partners. In this case, it is evident that my judgment went right out the window. I ignored all the red flags. My BPD woman repeatedly described, in her own words, every element of what I'm now reading about borderline. I didn't realize at the time that the coherence represents borderline. I thought the coherence was unique to her, a product of her several conditions: borderline, savant syndrome, anorexia, gender dysphoria, panic disorder, etc.

I listened to her descriptions and believed them. I didn't realize that she was describing what was happening to us, e.g. "I feel like I have to seduce people to keep their attention." I thought she was describing her other relationships, and I thought she was helping me to help her. She confessed that she had gone through the same process of enmeshment with over 30 other men, but I still believed that I alone would be the exception to the rule. I alone was equipped to save her and heal her. I believed that I was immune to her seductions. Hah. I was played from the start. It is a bitter lesson to discover how naive I am and how full of illusions.