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My BPD ex told me many times that she was attracted to fearful men. Indeed, her past boyfriends had all sorts of anxiety-spectrum disorders or fearful attachment styles. She said she wanted to make them feel safe.

I am a fearful man. For a time I felt a more profound sense of safety with her than I have with anyone else in my life. I felt better just being in the same room with her, even if she was busy and couldn't attend to me.

In hindsight, and with knowledge of BPD, I'm not sure this was the gesture of care that it appeared to be. Now I see it as a way for her to deal with her own sense of helplessness and victimhood: men who are fearful in relationships are easier to control. At the very end, she was certainly trying to control me. Is this interpretation unfair of me? Can anyone provide insight?

In a way, we appear to pick partners that are seemingly at a similar level of brokeness.

A BPD never will choose a totally healthy person, and apparently we didn't either this time around.

I think initially, this gives comfort, a feeling of belonging, although when we met initially, we were both at the top of our game in life, yet totally maskerading the childhood wounds we both carried.

As in every relationship, we mirror eachothers weaknesses, and we project the traits that we long to have in ourselves in our partners. So it ios not just a matter of being fearfull or weak, there were also strong sides of you that she must have been interested in.

My councilor told me many times that a truly healthy man would run from my ex after 15 min of conversation. I was a wreck when we started hanging out. I did everything I could to please her and better myself for her. In the end I found recovery and she wanted to live her old ways of dysfunction, chaos, self pity, blame and dishonesty to self and others.

She tried her best to destroy me, and I just kept fighting for a better way to live. Strange how things work out.

Found out yesterday her new bf is defending her on fb saying he will fight her family because they all abuse her. Funny truth is none of them have talked to her in months. He's in the fog, rescuing her from an unreal danger, hope he finds out the truth before she destroys him.

Great topic

Thank you for saying this. It is a good reminder. So much of this relationship now seems like an illusion. Sometimes it's hard hard for me to believe there was anything real in her perception of me or in my perception of her. But you're right. I was strong. I had been free of bipolar symptoms for a year, and I was making many other choices for wellness. Her presence in my life amplified my strengths, but the strengths were already there. Thank you for your affirmation.

Hi Jerry. I regret that I missed this post. The parallels between our stories are striking. Although I wasn't quite a wreck, my life had been dominated by illness and resignation to illness for all but the last one of the previous 20 years. I had been making major strides to better myself, and I was already inspired when I met her. She inspired me further, but my inspiration grew to rely on the reflected light she shed rather than on the light I had recently learned to shed on my own.

PWBPD definitely want to control their partner; the more control they have the less likely their partner will leave them. The rescuer/caretaker who puts the PWBPD ahead of themselves constantly is the ideal person to secure an attachment with, of course once you get too close the fear of engulfment is triggered and the devaluation begins.