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Has anyone had to deal with their BPD partner having  an intense sexual past? Like as an example multiple partners at the same time 3-4 men at once?Lesbian experiences,escorting ,unsafe sex with strangers and this list goes on and on?

Ever wonder how they live with themselves?Does all this behavior a way for them to self destruct themselves to make sure the remain unlovable?

I have not personally experienced a SO who had such a promiscuous past. (That I am aware of, of course.). However, I imagine that there are many reasons some do... .

Some see sex as recreation
Some are reliving sexual trauma reenactments
Some feel valued/important/special when they have sexual admirers
Some people confuse sex with love or use sex to satisfy a sense of belonging/acceptance
Some people do not have good boundaries in making decisions and saying no when they want to say no, so just go along with stuff.
Sometimes people feel alone and well, offering up sex, one can spend time with another.
... .And so on

What do you suspect your ex was getting out of her actions?  (What was the payoff for her?)

How do you feel this issue affects you personally?

At this point I don’t care about her past sexual experiences simply because I love her for who she was with me.But it hurts me to see her take such risks and now that I ended our relationship I know she will go right back to it(probably did it on her vacation last week down south which was probably the point of said vacation)... .and the stimulus of me ending it with her. I guess I love her so much that I’m away it harms me to watch a mother of two self sabotage herself so much.

I can surely relate to thinking that my ex needed me in many ways... .for his own sanity, or for the betterment of his family or such.

Yup, some people do have sex to cope with pain via avoiding pain... .engaging in sex.

I guess it comes down to really releasing ourselves of responsibility for the outcome of another... .and instead... .taking up full responsibility for ourselves, our healing, our focus and growth in life.  Sometimes focusing external is a way to escape from our feelings.  Whereas looking inward helps us heal.

I guess I wonder what things you have found help you to feel valued and important in life?

(Lots of times our sense of importance can revolve around our SO, so it can be helpful to identify ways we care for ourself and tend to activities that help us feel important, needed, and secure.  Hypervigilant focus on our SO often becomes a way of lofe, a way of thinking... .rewiring our habits to shift gears takes ongoing practice.)

(Fyi... .please pardon my way with words.  Often I am not as tactful as i prefer... .  and my words can appear “provocative... .” it is not my intent at all... .i just tend to shift focus to “self care” stuff pretty automatically or something.)

Hi, Shawnlam.   

It sounds like you're feeling concerned about someone you care about. I can relate to what it feels like to worry about someone who engages in risky and/or impulsive sexual behavior. 

Interestingly, Woolspinner2000 posted this link in another thread today.  It seems relevant here, too:  Sexual Behavior in Borderline Personality (https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=279430.0[b)


How long ago was your breakup?  It sounds like you still care a lot.  How are you doing with detaching and moving on?

mines also did it in the past to fund alcohol and drug habits.

she seemed to have lost the ego with all that she had been through and regretted a lot of her sexual encounters (claims not only to have been raped but also eventually revealed down the line that she herself had been accused of it!)

all of what she got up to i put down as a form of thrill seeking, but on the risky, destructive side.

she thought nothing of cheating on me then coming back to sleep with me almost as if it were here right do it and I shouldnt be bothered about it, or that it was some sort of failing on my part that led her to doing it.

yes i do believe it is one way of making themselves intentionally unloveable. i know what you are trying to say, but its more about this fear of becoming too close to a person and by having sex elsewhere it is almost as if they have relieved that feeling or sabotaged it in an attempt to protect themselves from this overwhelming fear of potential abandonment.

Mine had major issues with sex.  Initially our sex life was not great.  Over very quickly.

And then it suddenly got better.  The closer we became we started to talk about fantasies and then his fantasies would turn into him actually wanting us to go through with things.  I have always found sex intimate and it should be between two people.  He made me feel like a prude for this so I was actually starting to consider some of his fantasies. 

He initially wanted to have a threesome, then it progressed to him wanting to watch me have sex with another women, then the women turned into him wanting me to have sex with a lady boy.

Early on he confessed that he had had sex with a ladyboy - I should have read the signs but just thought he would have been young.

In my devaluation, he came home very late from LGAT course and I was sleeping in a bed with my friend (drunk) he grabbed a sex toy and lube and started using it on me while my friend lay next to me.  This was while he was having sex with two woman in one week.  One he professed to be his soul mate he had just met during a large group awareness training course and the other a married woman he had an affair with previously who he claimed to be the love of his life.

All the while claiming I was the best sex he had ever had.

Oh and I found out during my devaluation that he was addicted to Viagra and claimed he suffered erectile dysfunction.

I had the opposite situation. (Relationship with a male with "quiet" subtype of BPD.)

He had convinced himself that sex was yucky and somehow about people using each other.
He had some negative childhood experiences, like his uBPD father having extramarital affairs, even in front of him (then aged 8 or 9) a few times even having sex with an affair while he was "babysitting" his son and he was exposed to the sex.

Also, over the years, when he was an adult reaching out to women and wanting to be cared for like a little child, naturally had women reacting sexually too and he was horrified by that.

So I can kind of understand his aversion to it.

When we met, I kept asking him whether he was asexual or gay. (We met as friends, and I had no problem with him being either asexual or gay.) He kept insisting that he was a "normal heterosexual male" tho and over time he relaxed as he saw that I am someone who truly enjoys the warm trusting intimacy of affectionate, loving sex.

I naturally also asked him whether he was sexually abused as a child, because that would have explained it too. He said no and I believed him - it didn't sound like he was covering up a sexual abuse trauma. In this context he told me about his uBPD Dad having the affairs in front of him.

His sex issues never went away tho. Most of the time, he just wanted to be held, like an infant in a foetal position. Just being held soothingly.

For me, being soothing, caring loving and being physically intimate are no "contradictions".

But it's something he never became comfortable with and often when we had sex, I felt like he was doing it as some kind of "favour" to me. (Which felt awful and gross.) It felt like I was molesting a child or something, which given that pwBPD are emotionally damaged little kids, is pretty much right.

At the time, because I didn't know it was BPD, it made no sense to me tho. It felt horrific that anything other than the chastest and most platonic physical cuddling would feel "sexualised" to him and like he was being "used".

It made me feel like a MONSTER for wanting to kiss or touch him.

It was quite traumatic and it's taken me quite a while to recover from this bizarre experience.  
: (

I guess I wonder what things you have found help you to feel valued and important in life?


Oooh, I'm not sure you're going to like my answer, but take it for what it's worth.

I do not have dreams of feeling valued or important in life anymore, and I am not sure if this is a realistic goal for someone 99 percenter bottom feeder.

My two exes have proven to me that I as a human, breathing life form meant nothing to them, and really what's worse, they made me feel as though I was a burden and detracted from their life as opposed to added anything helpful or useful to them. As a matter of fact, most people in my life, short of my immediate family and my beloved dog who recently had to be put down and my dad who recently passed, have made me feel expendable, and I suspect I am.

This isn't necessarily something that is the outcropping of depression or anger or anything. It just seems like the way it is, like an adult version of realizing there is no Santa Claus.

Now, growing up and in my younger years I wanted to do great things. Now, on the downside of life, I feel it's too late. A wonderful life with my STBx and SD22 and SS19, the pets, the extended family, with support all around was the plan. That blew up in glorious fashion almost two years ago.

J