Ever wonder why you ended up with your BPDso?

[misuniadziubek]

The more time I spend on these boards, the more emotional I get. I keep finding examples of things I've experienced with my uBPDbf. I've known my uBPDbf was a BPD for three months now after reading two books about the disorder. I feel terribly guilty about it, but I keep going back and wondering how I ended up in such a sometimes toxic relationship.

Before this relationship,  I was in a relationship with a very stable guy for just over a year. My day to day conversations were always positive and calm. I can't imagine my ex ever raising his voice at me. I was somewhat happy with him. I was the one with the bigger issues, to be honest. I felt like I was the one always in control of things. I was bored. Our intimacy levels were very low and we rarely went past kissing. It's not the definition of a romantic relationship. It was more like a friendship, but I loved him very much and it was very stable, and very rewarding in terms of respect and companionship.

I needed so much more though, but I ignored those feelings for the longest time. Until the day I invited my uBPDso over for a weekend. We had only known each other online before this and had been at one point very close friends for almost a year. I knew a lot about his exes, his attempt at suicide from two years before, that he was extremely high functioning and intelligent. I also knew he was a bit vengeful when people hurt him. He had once asked me not to fall in love with him when we first started chatting online. It was a projection. He had developed feelings for me. Time passed, and he ended up entering into a new relationship. I continued with my own.

That weekend was incredible. I tried hard to keep things platonic, but he was charming and loveable. He made me have knots in my stomach. I felt everything I had to work hard to feel about my boyfriend at the time. I was also  a bit self-destructive at the time. I was still recovering from a case of violent assault on the part of a family member. I desperately wanted someone to make me feel safe. He hugged me tightly, he let me fall asleep in his arms. He was a perfect gentleman towards me. I found myself falling for him. I ended up kissing him the day he was leaving for back home.

I broke up with my ex that following week. I broke his heart, effectively. I realised I wasn't getting what I needed out of the relationship and I would never be able to stay faithful to him. I started dating my uBPDbf three weeks later.

He was truly wonderful to me in the beginning, and we were very honest with each other, talking about everything. He eventually admitted that he thought he had a personality disorder. Either narcissistic, histrionic or borderline. I was too far in a lover's daze to take those ideas seriously. I didn't see it. I'd studied personality disorders back in university, but my knowledge was hazy. He hadn't really expressed any of the characteristics at that point. Nothing that really stuck out.

Then things started to emerge slowly. Small things. One time after going to a friend's place he flipped out on me and said that "If I felt that way, we shouldn't even bother being in a relationship." I was taken aback by those words. How could he say that to me? Things had been going so smoothly. Then there was the weekend where I needed to take a bus to meet him halfway. I told him the wrong address. He flipped out at me over text. Started saying horrible things, like that he wasn't going to pick me up if I didn't get my S*** together. I was in disbelief. How could someone I cared for so deeply talk to me with such disrespect? When we finally met up 40 minutes later, he just hugged me and kissed me, but oddly enough, didn't apologise for the way he talked to me. Regretted nothing. Said it was my fault for not having gotten the address right. That stuck with me.

Two months in, we had a fight coming up to his place by car. He mentioned something about this being normal. That things always start to go to ___ for him in a relationship two months in. I wasn't giving up, though. I told him we'd stick it out and things would get better. More clues. Things got somewhat better, but they still kept piling up. Small things and big things. Random breakdowns because I left him alone in the "worst moment". Him driving off angry then coming back with a bottle of champagne as if everything was normal. This was still when I thought things were fixable. Nonetheless, everything was always my fault and I was always the one screwing things up. How to fix it? "Stop f***ing everything up.

The worst experience came 6 months in on Valentine's day. I'd lost the keys to my car. I had been searching for them for two days. Replacing them was about 400 dollars at the dealer (Brand-new car). I ended up needing for him to pick me up at the bus stop instead of me driving up. I thought even a carless weekend was better than not spending Valentine's day together. I naively thought everything would be fine. He flipped out on me. Over text repeatedly, and then in person. At first he refused to pick me up. I ended up having to walk 30 minutes to our designated meet up place crying the whole time and praying as well, because he refused to cross the border. (We're a Canadian/American couple) Then it was an hour of him ignoring me in the car and making "growling noises". At some point he exploded on me how I f*** everything up and how he doesn't imagine he can put up with my bull for much longer. Once we got home, he yelled at me some more. Then he got drunk. He refused to let me drink with him. Told me I didn't deserve it after what I did. That he had worked so hard to plan everything out and I had f***d it all up. Him withholding alcohol was probably the most painful and abusive part. I needed so badly to numb myself. I felt so broken. He was so horrible to me. And I didn't deserve any of it, no matter what.

I saw the roses he had bought for me. I felt bad for ruining his plans. I knew how hard he had tried. And so I blamed myself. I had thought just being together on Valentine's was good enough. I was wrong. The next two days, I was very depressed. I was traumatised by his actions. I couldn't stop crying randomly. He asked if I was ever going to stop "pouting" because it was annoying. He ended up driving me back on Sunday night. He had mentioned something about 'taking a charger'. I had misunderstood him. Turns out he had wanted me to take his phone charger to the car. He started screaming at me when he realised it. I could barely get a word out. I was already so broken. I couldn't handle anymore. I just wanted to go home. He just continued to scold me and tell me how much of a f*** up I was. I just stopped responding. Eventually, I got to work, spent my shift randomly going to the bathroom and crying my eyes out. Texted a friend I hadn't talked to in months begging if she'd meet up with me. I needed so badly to talk to someone about everything. I had kept his emotional abuse to myself for so long.

Met up with the friend and after an hour of talking, she told me to just talk to him about everything and gave me a lot of support. I felt empowered again. I texted him. I told him that 7 months ago, someone physically assaulted me and I was so traumatised it took me a while to recover. That what had happened that weekend felt very much the same. He retorted by saying that either I have to grow some skin or we should break up if I can't handle a few "harsh words". It turned into a full-blown fight where he told me he didn't respect me, that I was to blame for everything going badly in our relationship, because I was constantly being a flake and ruining everything. That he was done with me.

I went to bed devastated. I didn't text him until the next afternoon. I was crying all morning. My dad helped me clean up and organise my clothes while hugging me ever so often and joking that at least I wasn't pregnant. Then my uBPDbf texted and asked if 'we were over, because it sure felt like it'. I told him that we weren't over until we decided we were over. I explained, less emotionally, all the things wrong with our fight from last night. Seeing things more objectively, I realised just how manipulative his responses were. He was not willing to admit he was wrong or that his words were unfounded. He kept trying to convince me it was my fault and I just didn't want to take responsibility for what I did, and was just trying to shift all the blame onto him. I told him I knew I was partially to blame as well, but a relationship is always 50/50 no matter what and we are 100% responsible for our own parts. Eventually, he just asked if we could forget about it and just go back to normal. I agreed to it. It was better than nothing.

I had to see him in four days because I had a court date 5km away from him. I went through a very emotional grieving process. I would randomly have flashbacks of all the emotional abuse I'd endured. I hated him over it. I hadn't decided whether I'd end up staying with him or not. In considering breaking things off, I felt a very strong sense of freedom. That's when I realised just how intertwined into our relationship I had become. I'd stopped being my own person. I had let him emotionally abuse me to the point I didn't recognise myself. I wrote a post on reddit about my experience. Every single person told me to run as far as possible and that I had endured unimagineable emotional abuse. I didn't agree about the leaving part, though.

I gave myself that court date as a deadline for deciding if I was staying or not. I felt broken into pieces. I felt like I was constantly dissociating, that at any given moment a different person was occupying my body. It was just a result of my trauma. There was the part of me that hated him; the part that was independent of him and could easily go on without him; the part that still loved him dearly; and the part that was still scared. So in trying to understand my own coping mechanisms, I looked up dissociation. That's when I came upon PTSD and then... . BPD. I fell off my chair. I suddenly saw everything in a different light. I got every book I could possibly find on the subject and started reading.

I came up that Thursday but ended up missing my court date, so I drove over to his. I was still getting over the events of the previous weekend and my new found knowledge, so I was very cautious and controlled around him. He picked up on that instantly. He got angry over something and told me to just leave. That's when I made a very strange decision that pretty much just reflected how much I didn't want to leave him. I wanted to stay and see if things could work out or not. I couldn't be around him sober though, because of all the pent up resentment. So I got drunk. It gave me an excuse not to leave and also numbed me enough that I could stand to be around him.

I continued to drink that weekend, not in excess, but enough that his presence was bearable. It helped a lot. Then something strange happened right before I was supposed to drive back home on Sunday. He hugged me and started crying. Telling me how much he loved me and needed me, asking me not to leave him. It was just so genuine. I hugged him back tightly and comforted him. I realised that I knew him well enough to know that this wasn't completely his fault. That even if it's a part of him and will probably never go away, it doesn't define who he is. He is more than just someone with uBPD, he's my partner, and after everything we've been through, I have to at least give it another chance. I didn't trust him, but I wasn't leaving him. I cried my whole drive back home. I hadn't left him. 

The next weekend, I spent drinking again, mostly in secret. Normally, I barely drink once a month, but it eased the pain, made it easier for me to be myself around him. He is extremely intuitive, though, so he confronted me about the fact that I didn't seem to trust him any longer. He didn't really know about my drinking habits. After a very deep, honest conversation over the duration of that day, I finally let go and let him in. I started telling him how difficult things had been for me. How hard it was being honest, while I was so worried about him flipping out on me over something again. How I was pretty convinced he had BPD, and maybe parts of NPD, while not much of HPD. He admitted that I was probably right. This very conversation cemented my decision to stay with him longer. Eventually I admitted to the drinking as well. He got angry with me, but mostly for valid reasons and asked that I not drink without him knowing anymore, mostly because he wants to know when he is able to have serious conversations with me. I slowly got out of the habit, and don't really feel the need for alcohol that often, definitely no longer as a way to self-medicate. I'm still pretty convinced it helped me get through that difficult period. 

During this time period, I'd also written a very desperate email to my ex in French. About how huge of a mistake I'd made. We started talking again, and I started to mend fences with him. I'd cheated on him and broke his heart, so he had reasons not to trust me. I had no intentions of getting back together with him, but I had that deep seeded regret of having left such a stable and calm relationship for something so abhorrently turbulent.

I still wonder to this day, why I attracted my uBPDso into my life. I think I have a tendency for some codependency in my life and don't always take responsibility for my own failures. He's taught me a lot in terms of being more self-aware and owning up to my own actions. If I maintain my own identity and keep re-evaluating things between us while not taking his attacks personally, I find that I'm generally really happy with him. It's hard to back up the claim that 'but he's a wonderful guy' without somewhat feeling like I'm defending him the way a victim of domestic violence can't fathom leaving their abuser. I once told him that sometimes I feel like I have stockholm syndrome. But then the facts come back and bite me in the butt. There is a key difference in all of this. I make the choice, every single day to stick by him. I constantly take the time to improve my own self to make things easier for the both of us. I keep reminding myself of my own values and setting my own boundaries on what I will tolerate. I am very intensely aware that I am not 'stuck' in this relationship and could leave any time I wanted to. I just choose to stay, because behind the BPD is a very loving, caring, passionate and intelligent guy who I love to take out in public to meet other people. He always has my back, always makes sure I'm okay, and regularly makes me laugh.

[half-life]

Thank you for sharing your deeply conflicting tale. Despite all the pain you have endured in this relationship, you decide to stay with him. You had a good time together and you still believe in his heart, he can be a loving and caring person.

I am also very glad to hear you have reconciled with your ex. Whatever the future turn out to be, the reconciliation is going to be very good to the well being for both of you.

Given you SO is an intelligent person and he has some awareness that he might have an issue, I have some hope that he could heighten his self knowledge and improve the relationship.

Take care.