BPDFamily.com

Hello.
This is my first post. I have no idea what this site is like or if I'm in the right place or what. I just happened to look down and see that I'm at the end of my rope.
My girlfriend has BPD. She told me that when I met her, and I started dating her 4 months later. I thought I knew what I was getting into. But the way her disorder manifested when we were friends, before we started dating, was different than it manifests now. It was much more quick-fire and easy to spot. I'd wake up to a stream of texts sent at 5 in the morning telling me I was a piece of ___, and a few hours later she'd be in tears apologizing. Needless to say I got really good at just letting stuff bounce off me. I thought "I can handle this." But when we started dating that side of her disappeared. Everything was amazing for months, you know, even more so than the usual honeymoon period, I haven't felt this way in my entire life. I love her to death. But... .recently things have started to change. She comes really close to breaking up with me over essentially imagined problems, only to flip completely after half an hour and say she was in a weird mood and didn't mean anything she said. The first time was because her GPA was low and that was somehow my fault according to her (we're still in college). We're temporarily long distance, because of summer, and I haven't seen her in about a month. She goes through periods of texting me constantly, wanting to skype for hours, getting mad if I don't call her by like 2 in the afternoon, etc. Then she'll do a 180 and make me feel like the needy one. I won't hear from her for an entire day (not a huge deal on its own, but it's strange after her behavior during the other period), and when I call, she's distant, and doesn't seem interested in anything I'm saying and sometimes ends the call out of nowhere. I suffer from my own mental illness and called her when I was in a particularly and dangerously bad place and after a short while she told me she was tired of the conversation and hung up on me.
Anyways, long story short, I don't know what to do. I don't know how to tell what's part of her disorder and what is genuine, consistent emotions. I don't know if maybe there is something wrong with our relationship that I'm not seeing, or if she's just blowing minor things out of proportion. This is becoming much harder than I anticipated. It sucks sometimes. But I refuse to lose her. I love her too much. I just don't know what to do or what to think and pretty much all of the literature I've read on the internet seems vaguely ableist and unhelpful. She has been to a million therapists and pretty much refuses to see any more. She says she learned some skills from her therapy to help her deal with stuff but her emotional inconsistency is still glaring sometimes.
I don't even know what I'm asking really. I'm happy with everything, but it seems like she's not and I don't know how to tell what's real and what's not. Please god just someone open up a line of advice on how to wrap my head around this?

Hi CornerSign,

Welcome to the boards *welcome*. I'm sorry to hear that things have been taking a downturn in your relationship. Many of us can relate. You've found a great place to get support and advice on how to navigate your relationship with your pwBPD.

It can be difficult to distinguish what is the BPD talking and what is a true emotion in your SO. One thing that has helped me is learning to apply the tools and workshop trainings (see the right side of the page). The communication tools can be used not just with someone with BPD but with everyone else in your life--your mom, your boss, your friends, etc. so you don't really have to try to distinguish between what is BPD and what isn't.

One place to start is to begin seeing how your behavior/response to your pwBPD can affect how a conversation goes. I'm not blaming you for their behavior and treatment toward you, but in a relationship both parties have at least a part they play in conflict. For us nons, alot of times that may look like trying to argue back with them, or withdrawing, or walking on egg shells so as not to anger them. Before we can make things better, we have to stop making them worse, and that usually means modifying our behavior.

Here is a link to one of our workshops on The Dos and Don'ts of BPD:

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

Hey Cornersign!

Welcome to the club.  You are me exactly.  I wish I had advice.  I have two ears to listen -- feel free to continue talking.  But I have no wisdom yet.  You can see my previous posts to see how I am in the same boat as you.

This board has been extremely helpful to me, keep checking, keep reading.

How long were you dating?  I was 2 years.  And as awesome, wonderful, amazing and beautiful as the good times were -- if I could go back in time and do it over --  I would have ran fast and far far away.  She stole my soul. I'll get it back.  You will too