BPDFamily.com

I also already know I like this section better. It's more positive and I'm trying to stay positive. I have been posting on Reddit, but there is not a lot of support for people who want to work on their relationship. It's mostly people trying to work out how emotionally devastating these relationships are AFTER the fact. I was raised with two unsupportive, disordered, long divorced parents, so I'm very familiar with the dynamics. This is most likely why I'm atttracted to the misfits, like myself. I left home after high school graduation and never went back. I have spent all of my dating years leaving people who don't meet my needs. I'm not very forgiving. I've never gone after bad boys. I prefer weird/eccentric people that I can trust. I'm trying something different for once in my life. I'm trying to work on my relationships instead of running from them. I spent a year trying to work out the problems of my last relationship, but not a thing changed and I couldn't live with it for the rest of my life. (He had almost no sex drive and was superb at gaslighting. No thank you.) I'm trying to work on this relationship to both benefit myself and my boyfriend. He has no one because of his behavior (and he knows it). I have no one because I moved halfway across the country to raise my child in my ex's home state. I'm very happy here. I'm quite the loner, BUT I do love having a few close relationships. I have a great relationship with my child's father and his girlfriend. My boyfriend also spent a lot of time and money booking us a very cool vacation. It's coming up in a couple months and he's super excited. I believe we are both using it as a bargaining chip .

I'm a woman in my early 40s. I'm very fit and look much younger. I have been dating a man, who I suspect has BPD, for about six months now. He's a little older than me. We met on an online dating site and he really love bombed me good. First time that has ever happened to me because I let a lot of red flags go out of loneliness. I had finally broken up with the guy who wouldn't sleep with me . It only took about six weeks for the love bombing to stop. The calls completely stopped and the texting slowed to maybe once a day. One day he literally angrily yelled at me "how do you want me to cook this sausage?" (it was shocking!) and later picked a fight about how I cause my own acne. Do what? He was so nasty about it and turned it into me not caring about him. I left on that note and didn't contact him for over a week. I came back because I spent the week confused by the love bombing and just could NOT understand why he changed so quickly. I wanted closure, but we ended up back in the relationship. I decided that I could live with his little criticisms and lash outs because I am very thick skinned. My justification was that everyone is different and not every relationship can be perfect. Normally though, I have zero tolerance. But this guy and I have a chemistry like I have never felt in my life. I wanted to keep that as long as posssible. The criticisms got worse, but they were laughable and I usually did laugh and tell him to stfu or give him the finger. He didn't get offended because he is truly f'd up (part of what I love about him ). The teasing no longer bothered me and the lash outs completely stopped. A couple months later though, he started being disrespectful with my time and smoking in his house even though I asked him not to when I was there. He had lied about the smoking and hid it during the love bombing bit. So... .I left him again.

I spent a month trying to figure out what the heck happened and why he acts like he does. I couldn't let it go. I likened it to a drug addiction. Everything I searched kept coming up NPD and that was devastating to me. I couldn't imagine myself falling for a narcissist, so I told myself it was just traits. Then I searched for ways to beat a narcissist at his game and came up with "only a BPD woman is a match for an NPD man". Bingo! I looked up BPD and the lightbulb went off. I discovered I have a lot more compassion for people with BPD. When he finally reached out, somewhat angrily, a month later, I let him have his say and kept myself grounded. He had it in his head that I snuck out while he was asleep, but that wasn't true. I pointed out facts while keeping my cool. He finally started to calm down after he literally apologized for me. I thought that was hilarious. He got in a few more digs at me and then he was happy again. It didn't bother me at all because some of it was true. And to see someone gaslight via text is some feat. It was very interesting to be able to see that. I told him he isn't easy to love and he responds with, "No ***. I know this!" He said if I want to be with him I have to understand that he doesn't mind being alone. That makes me want to say, "screw you, I'm out". He has decided that he wants to leave it all up to me, but when I'm there he expresses remorse at not reaching out or seeing me more. I don't even respond. I just let him talk his bs because I'll believe it when I see it. I'd like to add that I am WAY out of his league in the looks and body department and we both know it. He mentions it a LOT. He has white hair and I could pass for late 20s easily. He doesn't seem to get that a woman can be hot AND a total dork. We're both eccentric and weird af. And I'm confused as to why he'd so easily give us up since not only am I willing to work with and put up with his bs, but that I also look really good doing it. Lol, I'm really not trying to sound so vain. I just think most guys would feel lucky to have me. I'm open to finding one at this point. I have finally reached that level of indifference with this relationship.

Anyway, so we lost contact for another week, so I reached out and he immediately asked to come over. I spent the next night at his house and he was great until the next morning. Total dick. "Can't you just leave so I can go back to sleep?"... .while I was kissing on him. "I don't really care if you come by this weekend or not". I had learned about BPD by now, so after getting over the initial shock and hurt (that I pretended wasn't there), I texted. "F U. I'm coming over anyway" and he wrote back, "bring beer". Then he cancelled on me a few hours later. This has become a pattern. We make plans and he cancels them. He tells me not to come over Friday night, then changes his mind. When I'm there he is incredibly sweet and feels bad about not treating me better and says he wants to spend more time together. Then Saturday morning comes and he wants me to go home and not come back over until Sunday. Then he cancels Sunday. I'm only free on weekends as it is. He is respectful enough not to cancel at the last minute and he always has a viable excuse. But this is driving me to want to give up, but then I feel compassion for his "suspected" BPD and decide to reach out and try anyway. It's exhausting because I have never done this before. It is a complete overhaul of my personality and makes me feel very foolish and that I am giving him power and control that he doesn't deserve. It is a huge struggle to find a balance that works for me and works for his BPD.

When I tell him about the messed up things that he says to me, he seems shocked. He's so incredibly contradictory. Often times he seems to enjoy being difficult and hard to love. He proudly calls himself "unpredictable", which happens to be a textbook description of someone with BPD. In the beginning he often would ask me to look past his "defense mechanisms". Who says that? And other times he talks about being a better person and being better to me. He has talked to me about his past relationships and it's really sad that he doesn't understand his fault in them. He thinks he's being rational. I feel badly for those poor girls, but also proud that they left and never looked back.

So, basically, I am here trying to find the heart to keep going. I just read a comment by someone who suspects they have BPD themselves and it took me right back to wanting to try. I'm just so very conflicted and it's exhausting. I need to work on that. I need to find a balance with this man. I want him to know I'm here because I want to be, not because we have a trip planned soon. I want him to know I'm here, but that I have my own life and am not going to be strung along. Gah, it's so hard! Hopefully the positive posts and comments here will help me to do that.

Welcome to the boards! Choosing to stay in a relationship with someone with BPD takes a lot of work in improving things, caretaking, and making sure that you stay in a healthy spot. You will probably find your relationship with lots of ups and downs and things that leave you confused. But for many of us, when things are going well, the difficult times are short lived. We have a lot of a workshops that I would suggest you begin reading through. You'll find lots of info on communicating better, taking care of yourself, and how to work on improving things overall. Here's a link to one of our workshops on the Dos and Don'ts of a BPD relationship:

https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=62266.0