BPDFamily.com

I’m trying to make sense of this girl I was seeing and whether she might have BPD traits. I’ve dated someone before who clearly did (suicidal threats, massive fear of abandonment, really unstable relationships), so I kind of know what that can look like, but with this girl, I’m not sure.

She does tick a few boxes since she can get paranoid, she seems impulsive, and she’s fallen out with loads of friends (she told me she’s lost a lot over the years). She also has an eating disorder. The weirdest part for me, though, is how much she lies. She told me she never lies, but I kept catching her out, and then she’d just say that it was obvsiouly a joke and how I am the one who can't be trusted.

What throws me off is that the fear of abandonment doesn’t really seem to be there. If anything, she’s the one who drops people and moves on to another guy straight away. She also constantly put me down and insulted me even though we were only seeing each other for about a month. It was insanely intense. Sometimes she’d straight-up lie about things I’d supposedly done in the past to make me look like the bad guy, and she’s even admitted she’s manipulated men before.
She was also obsessed with me and her having “low body counts,” which doesn’t add up because she tried to sleep with me on the second date, so it makes me wonder if she’s lying about that too. Now she’s in my college class, so I see her all the time, and since she dumped me she doesn’t even look at me.

Another weird thing is how pretty she thinks she is and tells herself but then she has insane body dysmorphia and is constantly judging and making little comments at every girl she sees whos overweight or not that pretty. She judges EVERYONE who walks by her.

On top of all that, she told me she dated her therapist (a 26-year-old woman) when she was 16, even though she says she’s straight. Honestly, nothing about her story fully adds up, and it really messes with my head because the intimate moments were amazing, and sometimes she genuinely seemed sweet and caring.

I'm. not 100% sure why I am writing on this forum, I guess I would like some sort of clarity on if she is a borderline or narcissist or if anyone can relate to the lying and how judgemental a borderline partner or ex has been. It is strange because having previously dated a clear borderline before this new girl is confusing me and my nervous system has been completely in tatters and I am not sure how to deal with it since I still see her in class 4 times a week.

Well that sounds familiar (don’t they all)
My ex is undiagnosed but I strongly suspect bpd. If not she is just toxic and from what you have described it is exactly the same. I can certainly relate to the lying and being judgemental.
At the end of the day it doesn’t really matter if it’s diagnosed or not, toxic behaviour is toxic behaviour and do you want that in your life?

My situation is a little different, married with kids and in the relationship for nearly 30 years so contrary to what I just wrote if my ex was diagnosed it would give me some relief to know the behaviour was fuelled by a disorder, but if the relationship only lasted a month I’d just be happy that I’d recognised the toxic behaviour early, bpd or not.

This is 'projection'; where the BPD accuses their partner of being the guilty one and tries to shift blame onto them. This is a pretty standard BPD symptom.

Not all BPD's show every symptom, there's usually a combination of varying levels. My ex had all of the traits except self-harm and she could lie very blatently to my face then switch off when I confronted her with the facts.

The only thing that is certain is that without her accepting she has problems and being willing to seek help and stick to it, this is what you're going to get all the time, as things will just repeat. The only question is if you're prepared to accept this kind of very difficult relationship.

If I think of you as my best friend, but suddenly you tell someone else that you don't even know me...what would I say?

I could tell the truth and say, "But he's my best friend in the entire world!"  And then everyone laughs at me as I feel stupid and rejected.

Or I can say, "I can't stand that jerk!  Like I'd ever say he's my best friend...that's ridiculous!"  Then everyone laughs and I'm on my way to making a new best friend.

If BPDs fear being abandoned, it's much easier for them to abandon that person than actually deal with all the intense emotion of being discarded.  Someone who breaks up with people often likely has huge abandonment issues and their meanness is compensating to hide their pain.

As I understand it, mental issues and behavioral disorders aren't black and white diagnoses, like having the flu or COVID, where you know they're each caused by a specific pathogen you can test for. 

Mental illnesses are more like a convenient grouping for doctors and mental health professionals to classify and attempt to treat disorders and mental illnesses, based on some common traits and patterns of behavior. 

From this site above (link: https://bpdfamily.com/content/borderline-personality-disorder), there's this statement:


I'd read more about it here, and elsewhere online.  But a lot of what you've described fits most of the criteria.  And the fear of abandonment can manifest in other ways, such as self-sabotaging relationships before they get to a point where the parties are committed enough that one party leaving the other would trigger those feelings of abandonment.

I think for example, if someone leaves her fairly soon after meeting her, then she can chalk that up to them being liars, cheaters, afraid of commitment, not enough for her, not man enough to handle her, etc. and  she doesn't have to consider that she pushed them away by her own behavior; that she is flawed in some way.


I don't think you should focus on the trees (i.e. a specific diagnosis) more than the forest (the behavior you're trying to avoid).  You know enough to know that she's generally a difficult person (to put it nicely).  I'd say her behavior is toxic and destructive.  Don't waste your time trying to parse that out further and see what makes her tick. 

You made a mistake by getting too involved early on.  Chalk it up to that, and move on, but understand it's not going to be painless; when she sees your lack of interest, that will probably trigger some feelings in her and spur her to try to rekindle something; pwBPD LIKE to be chased; they crave that attention.  That fills "the void" inside them. 

I think it's in your best interest to read more about this on the site - especially other threads in this section from guys who've been in your shoes - and understand her behavior is not about you, and there's nothing you can do to change it.  Don't let this shake your confidence in yourself or feel that you somehow could have done better by her. 

Imagine you're on a ship at sea, and you survive a violent storm.  you're curious now whether it was a hurricane, how powerful the wind was, what caused it, etc.  And that's normal... but don't need to sail back into it to try to find out!  Nor should you.  You can observe from a distance, heal, learn & understand why you allowed this person to trample over you for the brief time you were together, and also understand there's a lot you can't know because pwBPD hide a lot of secrets (or lie about them), and learn to be satisfied with that. 

One thing that helps is accepting that intense early chemistry can coexist with deeply unhealthy behavior - the good moments don’t cancel out the instability.

Look at her pattern from another angle... Could it be that she abandons relationships before they can abandon her?  People with BPD traits (pwBPD) seem to quickly notice subtle changes in the other person.

The short answer is, yes, she sounds like she has BPD (or CPTSD, anxiety, etc.).

Keep in mind different therapists may label the same symptoms with any number of diagnoses. My ex. was diagnosed by one with CPTSD, another with anxiety, and another with BPD.

But some of her behavior sounds a lot like my ex -- lying, projecting, hot sex, sex right away, etc. 

Keep in mind that not all BPD, etc., behave the same. There are a variety of symptoms, and not only do BPDs not necessarily have all of them, but BPD is frequently comorbid with other issues.

Yours sounds like she also is narcissistic. There's a cruelty to some of her behavior, from the insults to others to how she tries to gaslight you.

My ex exhibited other behaviors, too, but like yours, could be quite kind and sweet. It was the Jekyll and Hyde thing. Sometimes she was different on a daily basis. Sometimes she was different at different times of day. I'm not exaggerating when I say it could be like being with a different person. Late in our relationship, I wondered if she had multiple personalities. Even my best friend, who we hung out with, remarked how different she could seem. It wasn't just her behavior but her voice and physicality. She could sound like a little girl one moment and then a sultry woman another.

The weirdest thing is you can see it in photos, too. Her weight can fluctuate, probably due to her medications, but her expressions and the musculature of her face would change in ways that would make you think photos of her taken a few days apart were taken years apart. She's an extremely attractive woman, but in some photos, she would look plain because her face might be slack or there was no real light in her eyes. It wasn't her make up. She's actually one of those women that, to me, looks even better without make up, but she only did that at home. So, in other words, she would change her posture, her body language, her expressions, and so on along with her moods.

If your ex had similar qualities, consider if they happened when she was treating you differently. If you see that pattern, to me it just reinforces the likelihood that she has BPD, etc. Just keep in mind that comorbidity. There are other mental issues she could have.   

A month and a half later, and the OP never responded... I guess he got the answer he needed!