BPDFamily.com

Hello. An introduction and some of my story. I'm in a relationship with an amazing woman who has BPD and it's pretty brutal on both of us (she's previously been told she's bipolar, saw many psychologists who were really of little help, and just now entering a fairly intensive DBT program, including individual and group sessions over 12 months). She tells me she can't trust me. She breaks up with me over seemingly small things. She will spend days in bed in the dark all day, won't talk to me, won't eat (unless I leave the house, then I notice she will have been up and taken some of the food I've prepared from the fridge). But then after she will reach out and come back to me again, and most of the time we have a very fun, happy, close, and loving relationship (she'll say "I can't trust you, but I can't help myself, I keep wanting to come back to you. Why?".

I've never spoken to anyone else who has a partner with BPD. Others have told me, pretty clearly, that I should leave her, that I don't need this in my life, and asked the very logical question (which I guess comes up for a lot of people who have partners with BPD): Why would you want to stay in a relationship like that? What is it about me that also makes me want to stay and not walk away from the relationship?

I'm reading the "Walking on Eggshells" book, and I've come here for some different perspectives. I want to believe that there is a way that things can work for both of us, and not just be a relationship full of break-ups and pain.

Hi Q7,

Welcome to the family!

*welcome*

Many of us can relate to this. We often don't know others who know anything about BPD and they tell us to run. What's nice about this site is we don't do that - we don't tell you to stay or leave, but there are many tools here we can use to help us with any phase we find ourselves at. Have you read the Do's and Dont's of BPD Relationships yet?  https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=62266.0

I have been broken up with hundreds of times for reasons big and small and every size in between. It has been painful, horrible, and at times traumatic for me. I had no idea this kind of behavior was even possible!

It is definitely important to explore why we stay in such relationships, to see if we have tendencies towards unhealthy care-taking, have codependency issues, there is a lot to consider. Do you have a sense of any issues you may be bringing into the situation?

I am in a similar boat. Since she moved in last year, my SO has left 6 times. She is currently living 1.5 hours away. She says "I don't want to be done, but I don't know how we can live together, we make each other nuts." I have no idea if she is BPD, but she certainly displays many of the traits. I love her very much, but all this coming and going has me feeling very unstable. I am a "steady Eddy" kind of person - independent, capable and responsible. She is not so much any of those things.
All of my friends and family have asked me the same questions as you - why would I want to remain in this kind of turbulent relationship? why would I continue to subject myself to this kind of behavior? honestly, I am not so sure about any of it any more. Each time she leaves I have less and less of a reaction - eventually I will have none at all and I think I will be done with it. In the mean time, I keep learning about BPD and what I can do to take care of myself and be supportive of my SO.
I found this site after reading Walking on Eggshells and it has been a HUGE ... .relief I guess is the word I want, to find others who are experiencing similar, if not the same things from their pwBPD.
I am sorry to say I have no significant suggestions, but I found it helpful just to know there are others out there and I am not alone with this.

I wish I knew what that meant.  I have heard it 30 times. Some variation of "I love you and always will. But we can't be together. I don't know how to live with you". Then after some time she is back "in love"

Are they playing the field? Depressed? Have no feeling for you?  Actually trying to sort things out?  The above phrase never seems to stop

My SO says this often. Not when she's raging - those times she says "I'm done, I don't want to deal with your s**t". But after she calms down and we talk, she says she feels guilty and that she doesn't want us to start resenting each other and destroy our relationship, that we'd be better to live apart and work on our own issues. So to me this fits into "trying to sort things out"