My BPD story isn't as long as many here and for that I'm grateful. It’s the story of two people, myself and my girlfriend who has BPD.
My luck started early as my parents and extended family provide tremendous examples of conscious, positive relationships. After a painfully shy and isolated childhood I decided that I valued myself, wouldn't change for the worse to please people and wouldn't spend time with people that didn't make me feel good, even if that meant that I didn't have any friends. Over the years I have allowed many unhealthy relationships to wither whilst cultivating the positive ones resulting in me having a large circle of really tremendous people in my life. I work as a hospital pediatrician meaning that I spend my days with kind, inspirational, outwardly loving people. It means that I also knew a little bit about BPD. A little bit. In that I know a little bit about the moon but going there would be another story entirely. Finally, I had a 3 year relationship with a lovely girl who had extreme emotional instability who taught me many of the valuable lessons on this site through sheer trial(s) and error(s).
My girlfriend is not so lucky. Her own mother has either BPD or Bipolar type 2 (diagnosis pending) and her parents began fighting when she was very young, finally divorcing much later. She then moved around with her mother following a series of unstable relationships. Interestingly her mother is now some years with a fantastically strong guy who recently took me aside and told me that his relationship is great but the hardest thing that he's ever done. My girlfriend's mother reports that she never grew out of her toddler stage extreme moodiness and tantrums. During her adult life she's had a series of tumultuous relationships with men and women but whenever she burns someone out there's always someone else as she is incredibly gorgeous.
When I met her I was immediately taken by her beauty and style. I noted the scars on her wrist and that her personal life was a bit messy, she had recently left a fairly co-dependent boyfriend whom she was living with and moved interstate, taking a waitressing job rather than pursuing her profession. She was seeing a nice but hopeless guy which she said suited her as she didn't want to sleep with him and was in no danger of getting attached. I now see this as a period of calm where she could recognise her own issues and had found her own ways to manage them. It was clear that she frequently perceived others in black/white terms and would flit between brief intense friendships.
She was clear that she didn't want an intimate relationship with me which I accepted fairly quickly. We became friends whilst both dating other people casually, though she was somewhat jealous of my other girlfriends. Over the next few months she began to erode my friendship boundaries - e.g. after initially paying for some extra things as I had a better job I found myself paying for everything. Attempts to discuss, spend less or to get her to pay were disparaged. I pushed back a few times by outlining my criteria for friendship and even "broke up" with her twice as a friend, which I had never actively done before. Both times she came back; contributed her share and attempted to change. What's more, she befriended my housemates and would just be at my house when I came home from work. It was a funny relationship: we were close, she drove me crazy with her selfishness and demands but would be incredibly right about me often enough that I learnt a lot about myself. We had fantastic fun and were really successful with a few artistic projects we collaborated on. I have high self esteem and diverse friends and was able to accept this unusual relationship as part of my life.
When we finally got together it was a bit of a surprise to both of us but seemed to just work. It was a tumultuous time as I was due to move to NY for work. We ended up moving together, which was my first time living with a girlfriend. It was all made more complicated by her father being terminally ill but living in Chicago. We continued to have tremendous fun but the in-between times slowly began to unravel. Her critical comments became more frequent and she became increasingly dependent; quitting her job and spending all of her time at home cooking for me whilst continuing to want to spend money. My girlfriend said that what she really wanted to do was to be a mother and her lifestyle seemed to suit that so I attempted to broaden my expectations.
I'd previously seen a few dissociative / dysregulated episodes when we were friends (always while drinking) but they were never directed at or involved me. Then over a few months she had a few episodes, again usually after drinking. She would be triggered by something, get glassy eyed and distant, start mumbling self hatred and then try to run away repeatedly in whatever she was wearing (e.g. underwear and a t-shirt on a cold night). I of course always stopped her. The criticism at home became relentless and I began to feel quite beaten down when I was with her. I was pretty sick of it by now.
Her second dysregulated episode should have been a line but wasn't. The trigger was a nothing comment - she went crazy, tried to hit me and ran off sobbing into the night. I chased her, she turned and threw a bottle at my head and kept running. I chased her for a bit longer and then thought to myself: "I am a 30 year old doctor and I am chasing my crazy girlfriend down a dark NYC alley on a Saturday night. Stop." I turned, walked back to the party, got a cold beer and started talking to a friend. 10 minutes later she was at my elbow glaring, though soon started screaming again. Eventually, she stopped and seemingly forgot all about it. As she slept next to me that night I read about male victims of domestic violence and it was me - I had never imagined that I would be involved in domestic violence in any way. In the morning she acted as though nothing had happened, which was partially true as she couldn't remember much. I told her that she had crossed a line by being physically aggressive towards me and that she needed to sleep in the spare room for a few nights and to seek therapy. I hadn't figured out that she had BPD at that stage. Of course, this triggered another dysregulated episode and a really hard two days, multiple threats and attempts to run away, saying that she wasn't good enough for me, etc. In retrospect this all served to take the focus off her behaviour - by the end of this two days I was just so glad that she was happyish again. Of course, she didn't sleep in the spare room or see a therapist at all.
The next few weeks I was frequently away so there were no blow-ups. The relentless criticism continued when at home and I decided that I wouldn't tolerate it - I began to point it out to her which worked sometimes and sometimes just ruined the evening. I began thinking that I would take up her offer of ending the relationship the next blow up. My best friend (obviously a better doctor than me) suggested that she might have BPD and I agreed - it recast a lot of her behaviours for me.
Then we went on holiday, which was wonderful. Two weeks of visiting friends, some time on our own and two really successful performances that we'd planned for a while. One episode of jealousy where made me stop talking to another girl (who was standing there with her boyfriend) and one blow up (again, while drunk) but I just let her rage and she came back calmer. I seemed to be figuring this out! Ironically, towards the end of our holiday I got a bit drunk and rude (It wasn't that bad but I have never done this in my life and am still mortified that it happened) but she laughed it off the next day as me being under a lot of pressure from her. We spoke frankly about our relationship, the frequent criticism, the blowups and her sick dad. She had great insight without excessive guilt and apologized for her past behaviour. I told her that I needed the relationship to be better in order to stay and promised to work together with her. I vividly remember looking into her huge brown eyes that morning with the feeling that I could spend my life with this strange and beautiful person. We finished the holiday on a strong, loving, note and, as I was heading away for work for two weeks, she decided to go and visit her dad rather than go back to an empty house. There were two people that we vaguely knew camping in the same area and she was able to get a ride with them to Chicago.
The following two weeks we had much less contact than usual but I was busy working and didn't think too much of it, just that I was glad of a little break and that maybe she was being more independent – I was really looking forward to seeing her again. When I got back she was very loving, we sat down, had a great talk and then she dropped her last grenade. On the drive to visit her sick father she decided that she had "a really strong connection" with one of the guys in the car so she had gone back with him to his house and had sex twice. She was sorry, but she felt really good about us now. Great. I was very calm and said that, as I had never been involved in cheating in any way before, I didn't know what to do but it would take a few days to find out. The next morning I knew that she was moving out and the day after that I knew that we were breaking. It pretty much confirmed my BPD suspicions and I told her. As I read her the criteria she started crying and said that it described her perfectly.
Unfortunately over the following week her father deteriorated and died quite suddenly. I was in the incredibly conflicted situation of still loving this girl, being really angry with her, and being her only support person. I was the only person with her at her father's funeral whereas her brother had at least 20 friends. The funeral weekend was a roller-coaster - episodes of great connection, completely dissociated rages and one memorable time where I and her entire remaining family watched her rage across the other side of the room while they all told me that she had always been like this, that they felt for me and that they didn't know if she would ever change.
The last month has been very interesting and I've just been trying to feel my way through and do the right thing, for me but also for her. I was able to drop my own anger and hurt to be there for her for the first two weeks but found that after a few hours with her I began to feel anger again and looked forward to separating. Since she moved out we we have seen each other twice, once randomly. I am still dealing with a degree of anger, hurt and embarrassment that I haven't experienced in my adult life. Interestingly, the anger comes up strongest during yoga. Go figure. She saw a psychologist, was immediately diagnosed with BPD and was lucky enough to get straight onto a 12 week DBT program which she's been absolutely committed to. She's stopped drinking altogether. She's hurt me greatly but there is no doubt that she's hurt herself much more, she hasn't cut again but I have seen her punch herself in the head for 10 minutes straight and she has certainly contemplated suicide. I keep reminding myself that bad and mad people both hurt you but the mad ones hurt themselves more and so shouldn’t be blamed. We're both victims of BPD. We had one really sad conversation where she said that she tried so hard so many times to change but just kept falling back into her old patterns and thought that she was just a worthless person for her failure. I have to give her full credit for her honesty - if she didn't tell me I probably never would have found out and I don't think she's lied about anything else. I checked her phone messages a few times to verify what she'd told me - I needed to protect myself and I don't feel at all guilty about it, thanks.
She pushed back against the new limits but once she saw that I was serious has acquiesced to them and to new ones without a fight. She's asked a few times for a guarantee that I'll take her back and that I won't see other women, neither of which she’s got. I've dated a few really nice (albeit slightly boring) girls in the last few weeks which has restored a degree of normalcy and esteem. She still contacts me with texts and attempted phone calls and I've let this go currently as it's slowly decreasing, she is mostly alone in a new city and has just lost her father. I hope I'm doing the right thing. The SET approach has been really helpful and I've defused a few nascent dissociative episodes already.
Of course, I am still totally and madly in love with this girl. The list from Themis (
https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=113820.60) about "who we fell in love with” keeps making me cry because it touches me so deeply. My family and some of my friends clearly want me to cut her away permanently, even though most don't even know about her infidelity and violence. Many of our mutual friends know about some of the issues but really admire our relationship (it looks great from the outside) and are supportive of us continuing. I believe that there is a chance of a future positive relationship but know that I need time to heal and that this will involve a period of minimal / no contact. Sure she has huge problems but I have hope for several reasons: her worst behaviours were at times of real external stress, she doesn't seem as severe as some, she has every reason to change now and finally, she has admitted that she has a problem, has a diagnosis and is undergoing a treatment with a high success rate. Her beauty, creativity, style, vivacity, perceptiveness and love are remarkable even amongst my remarkable friends. We are missing each other greatly and I would love to hold her small shoulders in my arms even for a minute.
It's almost certainly not going to be easy, but it might just be worth it. Of course, I accept that she might cause me further harm, run off with someone else or forget me altogether. I don't know how I'll find the strength to get over those things, but I know that I will and that she won't get any more chances. Right now, I don't know what I will choose to do so I will just have to see what happens and how I feel over the next few months.
Thanks everyone for reading and for the creators of this wonderful resource. There's a lot of hate on the internet so it's refreshing to see love shining in dark places.
