BPDFamily.com

Hello everyone, I'm a 21 year old woman who is currently in a relationship with the most wonderful girl in the world who has BPD. We have been together for almost two and a half years and it's been a rollercoaster of emotions. I have to be honest and say that I didn't do research before because I thought that I could handle whatever she was going through and be supportive about it. My girlfriend was diagnosed when she was 15. She was first detected DDA whe she was a kid. Puberty and teen years were a living nightmare for her. The psicologists she visited where we live,  had very little knowledge so she went treatment after treatment, and took hardcore medication until the age of 18. She has anxiety disorder and depression, but she says that depression is not a syntom but a side effect of BPD. She's now 24. She told me she had BPD into our first month together. At first everything was ok, but then I noticed that she was getting worse and worse in behaviour, irrationality and being violent, paranoic and extremetely jealous and possesive but I never said anything, just let it pass. This two years had been heaven on earth but also hell. The relationship we built with nothing but pure love transformed into this toxic spiral of a rotten relationship. I had cried to sleep almost every night wishing for things to be different. Sometimes I feel awfully tired and sad and I have realised that I had copied some unhealthy attitudes through this time with her. I feel so alone because I have no one to tell about this stuff. My friends think that she isn't good for me because they had witnessed some really bad fights and discussions, and I wish I could tell them but my girlfriend wants to keep that part of her private, and I completely understand. In some way it feels as if I just gave up everything else in my life because my relationship demands a lot.
Recently, we had a fight because she did something that hurt even more the state of the relationship and it broke me. We broke up for a little while after that, and in that short period I started developing a friendship with two girls from college and I really like them to be around for a much longer time. The problem is that my girlfriend hates them. She explained to me that they remind her of what she did and how she made me feel and doesn't like them to be around me because they were my ''support system'' while we were apart and she thinks that they can influence me into bad things (drugs, alcohol, cheating) even though she has never met them. She does that when I met someone new, it feels like she doesn't want me to have friends at all. I'm only allowed to go out with them 2 times per month, and when I'm with them she gets angry at me for not paying attention to her. I can't never be at peace when I go out. So after that, we continued the relationship but I started feeling down and thinking that it was for the best to end things. When I tried to break up with her she told me that I was choosing them over her which was not true. I love her and in reality I don't want to end the relationship but sometimes I feel that the relationship consumes all my energy, that I am leaving my life behind and even the person that I am. I feel guilty for feeling like this because I know it's not on purpose. She told me that she is going to start therapy but still her opinion about my new friends remains. Is she going to develop a better criteria of them when the therapy sessions follow it's curse and development? Am I wrong for wanting to keep my friends? I feel losing my mind, questioning all my decisions, feeling wrong all the time. So I would like some tips for growing her into trust me, coping with jealousy, ways to calm her down when she has a meltdown, every piece of advice anyone can give me after reading this, please help me.

Hi and welcome to the family  :hi:

I am sorry about what brought you here but I am glad you found us. This site offers a lot of information on BPD and many tools for us to better handle the difficult situations and feelings we encounter with our partners. I would encourage you to look around the boards, read through everything that resonates with you and share your experiences with other members. We understand your pain and try to help and support each other as good as we can.

It's common for pwBPD (people with BPD) to isolate their partners from friends and family out of jealousy or fear of abandonment. But if we want to be a positive influence in their lives, we need to be strong and emotionally stable and a support system is essential for that. If we don't protect and care for ourseves, we will be in no condition to support our partners. So no, you are not wrong for wanting to keep your friends, it's great that you have people in your life that care about you and now you have us as well. You need all the support you can get, not only for yourself but also for your relationship. Your girlfriend might not be able to see it that way (yet), but it's a win-win situation for both of you.
How do you think your gf would react if you put it that way?

On the topic of handeling her meltdowns, you might want to look into tools like JADE (https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=139972.0), empathetic listening (https://bpdfamily.com/content/listen-with-empathy) and validation (https://bpdfamily.com/content/communication-skills-dont-be-invalidating). It's easy to fall into a pattern of justifying, arguing, defending and explaining when our partner is upset. This is likely to fuel the conflict. If we want to deescalate, we need to understand where the rage is coming from by listening and identifying the underlying emotions like fear of abandonment or rejection or insecurity. Validation is about accepting these feelings, understanding them and nurturing them. Even if we don't agree with what somebody is saying or doing, we can still try to respond in a way that is validating.

This is probably a lot to take in right now, but I hope it will give you some hope and clarity.
Feel free to share your opinion on the articles or ask any questions and keep posting!