BPDFamily.com

      My BPD partner has changed her identity once again. Now she claims to have hit rock bottom and for the first time has joined an intensive outpatient program. That seems well and good but, at the same time she lost her job (again), she has isolated herself to an extreme degree, and she spends day and night reading about BPD online and having extremely dangerous and violent sex with sadists she finds on the internet (which in turn make her nervous and she won't let me touch her, not even a hug).

     

      I like to speak to her about her disorder. She phrases things in ways which really allow me to understand what it's like to be in her skin. The explanation that hit home the most was when she attempted to explain her life as a whole.

      In one of her emails pleading for me not to leave her she said "I've lived my entire life thus far in a reality that is so far from society's reality that I have become a recluse. I've built a reality for myself which relies solely on chaos because that is all I know. Sabotaging and destroying things in my life is the only way for me to somehow feel in control. I recognize the behavior after the fact and I need to do something NOW or I will be sucked into the undertow and lose myself forever."

   She constantly reminds me that she is "a static character whose happens to be extremely dramatic"(her words).   I tried to explain to her in a way that would validate the identity she tries to hold on to while remaining realistic. I tell her that there are 4 versions of her that I know of, although she is always the same person to me. There's the outgoing goofball, the whip-smart debater, the self destructive introvert, and the sex addict.

      She has been avidly reading these boards and telling me what she has found, usually in a self-pitying and apocalyptic manner. She believes that with her condition, it is easier for her to absorb and process this information by looking at the information as if applying it to a good friend and not herself. She then attempts to use it in her daily life by imagining how the people around her feel.

      Through the state she has found a program offering DBT and woman's group therapy, one on one counseling, and medication. She said she is scared to death of going through all of this (which will occupy at least 3 days of her week).

      She stopped going to work and has filled all of her free time besides this with dangerous sexual interaction with strangers.

       Every time I see her she has bruises and welts. She shared with me that she had a horrible hostage experience when she was 18 which she refuses to see as sexual abuse and considers entirely her fault.

      She is fat (compulsive eating) but, pretty and intelligent and recently seems completely convinced that the only way to get people to stay in her life is by offering sex and proving herself completely submissive. I've never seen someone value themselves so little while putting on such a facade of confidence.

      She's forcing herself to be abused and degraded by strange men on the internet as a form of self mutilation while totally succumbing to the intensive treatment program she found.

(I remind her often how proud I am of this step she is taking)

Why is she doing this to herself?