oceanyc
 Offline
What is your sexual orientation: Straight
Who in your life has "personality" issues: Ex-romantic partner
Posts: 28
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« on: October 16, 2016, 04:06:34 PM » |
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I’m new to this board and figured I’d share my story. It will be really long because I think it’s important the full story be told. I’m not entirely sure whether this is a BPD case or not, but it does have the familiar symptoms when I look back, so here we go…
In October of 2013 I met a woman on match. We instantly hit it off through email and the phone. We spent an entire Friday on messenger and had what she said was one of the best conversations. She said everyone at her office kept asking her what she was laughing at yada yada yada and that she felt like we had known each other our whole lives. It was the weekend of her 30th birthday and her friends had planned a big party, but she spent almost the entire weekend calling and texting me. At this point we hadn’t met in person, though she had asked me to the night before but I wasn’t able to, and it turns out we’d never have the chance as the next day she ended up upset about a comment/joke I made about her being on a date after she said she was having dinner with her son. I was referring to a date with her son, but it was over text and she interpreted it incorrectly. Things got even worse and she ended communication.
As fate would have it, over the next 2 years our lives sort of intertwined in a social circle card game league. I became involved with the league the January after we met, and it turns out she had been a part of the league with her ex(who she had just recently broken up with when we met online). For the better part of a year and a half we saw each other a handful of times and pretended not to know who the other was. It was easy to do since we never met in person. In that time she was with 2 other men besides her ex, yet she went out of her way to make a comment to me. One time as she was leaving I was outside on the phone and she commented as she left “well that was short lived” referring to her time playing the game that night. I thought that was odd and an indication she knew he I was since randomly commenting to people distracted by something like their phone isn’t something most people do. She also told a mutual friend at one point that she didn’t think it was a good idea to go to a game one night(before we had randomly bumped into one another) because I was there.
Anyway, fast forward to August 2015 and in she walks one night while I was setting up the game. It’s just the two of us and she asks if she can sit with me while I eat. We made small talk for a little while and ended up that I needed someone to help me with the game as we had more people than anticipated and she offered to do it. I paid for her dinner as a thank you and there was some light flirting. She took my number and texted me the next morning about how much fun she had and how she’d like to maybe do more with the league. She ended up playing again that Saturday and we had mutual friends throught he league so everyone hung out til about midnight. They ended up leaving and we both had been drinking so we decided to walk around and had a great time talking. At one point the conversation got pretty deep and I decided to “remind” her that we actually sort of knew each other. She acted completely surprised and claimed she had no idea. However it was a horrible acting job and it was pretty obvious she knew. I blew it off because we had gotten along so well that I decided it didn’t matter, if that’s what she had to tell herself to be comfortable it was fine by me. She ended up using the league as a cover to be able to get to know me better.
Over the course of the next month we texted or spoke every day. She had just gotten out of a relationship, 2 weeks before she showed up at the card game,(the 3rd guy since we met 1 a year and a half earlier) and said she wasn’t ready for a relationship. Apparently it was pretty intense and after 6 months they had decided to move in together. He was selling his house to move in with her and her son. The way she tells it their first fight was about getting the house ready to sell. The next day he told her he couldn’t “do this anymore” after telling her in the am everything was fine, and he dumped her. There was also something about him wanting to move back to his home state and her considering it prior to them deciding to move in together. She mentioned to me that she is terrified of commitment. She told me all of this after I slept at her house the night of Labor Day.
So, there’s Labor Day. She wasn’t able to get ahold of me as I had passed out during a thunderstorm while trying to comfort my dog who is terrified of them. She texted and called until I answered. I was unsure whether I even wanted to go as some things she had said and done during the month had left me with a question as to how deep I wanted this to go. I eventually met up with her and our mutual friends, had a great time, and ended up staying the night at her house. Nothing sexual happened. She ended passing out on her couch after asking me to stay the night. She woke up suddenly and went upstairs. I eventually went to check on her and she was passed out in her bed. I tried to wake her up to have her lock the door behind me but she held my face and asked me to stay. She ended up sleeping on me through the night. I Ubered to go get her car that we had left at the restaurant before she woke up so we wouldn’t have to bother with it later on. When she woke up we ended up talking for a few hours as we lay in her bed and she told me about her breakup that I referenced earlier. She cried and told me she had insecurities that could kill a relationship etc, and we agreed that she wasn’t ready for a relationship and that me being a rebound wasn’t a good idea.
Two weeks later we had a little spat about the frequency of our communication and she started to pull away. This is when things really started to get…unreal. Mostly due to outside factors. That weekend her ex’s son(the one she broke up with right before we met online) ended up drowning in a diving accident. She rushed down to try and “help”, went to the hospital where I found out later ons he was not wanted or welcomed. It was devastating for her and her son, particularly because her son’s father and her former fiancé died in a motorcycle accident 7 years prior. Her son was 2 or 3 at the time and now a kid that had been like a brother to him had died. That week was particularly tough for her and myself, as I didn’t know where I belonged or what I could do for her. We heard that the family needed money to help pay for the funeral costs(which turned out to not be true) so I took it upon myself to raise money and in one night I was able to gather about $700 from people in our league. The family refused it because they felt bad taking it if they didn’t need it so I held on to it, but that will come into play later on. Her communication with me that week was very limited. When we finally texted the following Sunday I was confused and told her not to worry about talking to me. She interpreted it to mean I didn’t want to talk to her anymore and the next day ended all communication with me.
A couple weeks later I went out of town for a family wedding, when I came back we bumped into each other at a friend’s moving sale and spoke a little bit. We ended up meeting that night and putting everything in the open at which point she admitted feelings for me. She told me about how she didn’t understand the problem ith how frequently we communicated because she went back over her calendar and counted every day we spoke. She told me not to stress and “just go with it”. Her birthday was the following week and I had an arrangement of flowers sent to her work. I made sure not to include any red roses. She called me after receiving them and told me they were amazing, she didn’t expect to get anything like that, and I had included some of her favorite ones(pure luck). Her best friend had flown in for her birthday so they were going out of town for the weekend so I didn’t expect to see or hear much from her. However, the following night she called me and invited me over to “play cards with her and her friend”. We had a good time and she invited me to go with her, her friend, her son, and her son’s best friend on their trip out of town. I ended up going and the first night we had amazing time. Unfortunately during the course of the day I noticed she seemed to be in some pain. When I asked her about it she said she’d talk to me about it later on that night. The time finally came and she revealed to me that earlier that week she had been diagnosed with endometrial cancer. She needed to have a hysterectomy which was scheduled for the beginning of December. After telling me she grabbed me and we hugged for awhile. We went back upstairs and I left the room for a bit to just clear my head and process it. When I got back upstairs she woke up and pulled me into bed, caressed my face and we hugged each other. I was aware of her some sleeping in the next bed, and she was sharing a bed with her best friend so I ended up moving to a foldout in case her son woke up. I didn’t want him to be confused or upset.
Two days later we were texting and I was making dinner that night. I offered to bring her and her son some and she took the opportunity to tell me her and I wouldn’t be hanging out alone anymore. She said her son had asked if we were dating and she didn’t want to confuse him. She said she had told me we’d never be more than just friends and I needed to accept that. Her replies to my texts were rude. She’d text me long ranting texts and when I replied she said that I was going to get her fired because her boss was asking who kept texting her. The texting went on for hours. After that we didn’t talk for 3 weeks.
The weekend before Thanksgiving I went on a weekend cruise with a bunch of friends. My one friend took a ton of pictures and everything was posted on Facebook. My phone didn’t work so I wasn’t able to receive any messages, but when we got back to port I had a text from her. This is where I feel I made my first mistake and maybe the first time I recognized something wasn’t quite right. Her text said that she could forgive me for almost getting her fired because I hadn’t made fun of her football team that weekend. I ignored the obvious lack of acknowledgment of her own role in the situation because I was happy to hear from her. We ended up shopping all day on Black Friday, and of course had a great time. Her surgery was scheduled for a week or so later. Over the next month we talked everyday. After her surgery we hung out when she was physically able. Everything was so easy and we were just enjoying the time. We were “going with it”.
We ended up meeting up the Sunday after Christmas at a game for the card league. We decided we wanted to go to dinner that night and she told everyone around us we just made a “date”. What she didn’t know is that I had prepared a present for her. I had gotten to know her pretty well and shopping for her was easy. I got her things that reflected her, her personality, what she liked etc. Small things that have meaning. When she opened the box she was floored. She said “this is me and a box” and no one she ever dated could have put something like that together. We had a great night, dinner, drinks, movie(during which she moved the armrest to lay on me etc). We followed that up with what she said was the best date she had ever been on in her life. The best part was we didn’t even do anything contrived. We sat around a fire pit, drank a couple beers, walked along the boardwalk, sat under a window in the rain, laid in my truck and cuddled. She tried to find a hotel room for us but there was no vacancy due to a show that was in town. We hung out again the next day and had a great time again. The following day she called me and told me in no uncertain terms how she felt about me. She saw a future with me, knew I’d be great with her son, and knew I’d never hurt her. She said when we were cuddling in my truck our bodies moved perfectly together and she was surprised by how smooth I was and how comfortable it felt. She spent the next few days supporting what she said, and the next time we saw each other she tried to kiss me, but it surprised me, I was in the middle of something so it was awkward and didn’t go well. She had also lied to her parents about where she was that night(they were staying with her after her surgery). She had told me to text her at a certain time, and when I asked why she said she had told them it was a client and she needed to go. I thought that was extremely odd and highschoolish, but again I let it go. The next day she called me to tell me we needed to slow down and that when I had mentioned looking forward to cuddling again it was “too much” and she’d run the other direction. A couple days later she texted me about how she wished I could meet her at work and we could cuddle…yea. A few days after that she called me to tell me how she had so much anxiety that day, felt overwhelmed and panicked, didn’t want to go home, had been driving in circles and just wanted to talk to me. She became annoyed because she had to hang up abruptly due to her parents and son waiting for her outside when she pulled into her complex.
A few days later we met for breakfast. During our conversation she dropped the line that she thought she saw her ex(the one who had just dumped her) the previous day and her body froze. At this point it had been about 6 months since their breakup so I found that really weird. I told her we probably shouldn’t be doing this as she wasn’t over him and her reply was “we aren’t doing anything, it’s not like we’re dating”. We parted ways, I gave her a half-hearted hug and before I could start my truck my phone was ringing. She wanted to talk about it and we sort of worked things out. We had plans for the next day. That day started off great for her, but for myself I wasn’t happy how breakfast had gone. I was admittedly distant with her during our texting/messenger conversation in the morning. She called me at lunch and her mood was so overwhelmingly happy that I couldn’t stay distant. For an hour we messaged back and forth about our plans that night. Things started to go bad at work for her and her mood changed. She started to snap at me over text/messenger. She said her babysitter had fallen through but she’d try and figure it out so we could still hang out. I told her not to worry about it, that we don’t have to do what we planned because we have fun doing just about anything together, which we did. Later on I hadn’t heard from her so I texted her and asked what our plans were. She said she’d have to cancel. I was disappointed and said as much. Her reply wasn;t very understanding and I told her that that day had been like walking on eggshells with her. I didn’t hear from her for a week after that. However, the next day her friends took it upon themselves to post on her Facebook page how much fun they had the night before and how she had “juice” to share with her other friends. Being drunk and at the event her and I were supposed to be at together I tried texting and calling her to no avail. While I didn’t say anything overly rude I wasn’t exactly nice either and the “juice” thing bothered me, which I’m convinced it was designed to do. When she finally answered me the following week she told me that I was only interested in what I could gain from having a relationship with her, that I was rude and that I had hurt her after she had told me that she didn’t believe I could ever hurt her. I tried contacting her after that conversation, sent her flowers, but she never answered. I finally lashed out and told her she had used me to get over her ex and she responded by blocking me on everything.
We didn’t speak for 5 months after that. In May I found out that her son’s best friend, the one who went on her birthday trip with us, had been diagnosed with Leukemia. She had started a fundme page and I contributed the $700 I had raised previously to the fund. It was the perfect answer to what to do with that money. She never knew I had raised that money either. Not too long after that we started talking again after I wrote her an email explaining my side of things and how I felt. We spent that day emailing each other and she called me immediately after work. We caught up a little bit and she revealed that she had started seeing someone a few weeks after her and I stopped talking. She also claimed to have told him about me and how I’d always be part of her life even though we weren’t speaking at the time. For a few months we communicated here and there. I had recently created another match profile and she had an anonymous one which I instantly knew was her when it viewed mine. The ironic thing is prior to viewing it she was distant. The day after she viewed it she contacted me and was flirty and fun. Not too long after that she came to the league game we had that night. We talked a little about her relationship and she said it’s nice to be out and not be stressed by him. She had to leave abruptly because he decided to come to where she was even though he wasn’t supposed to. She said he’d freak out if he saw us together but that she told me I was her person, she meant it, and she still means it. And out the door she went. The following week she showed up again and this time we spoke for an hour about everything that had happened during our relationship. She said she missed me and the reason she cut me off is because I didn’t seem confident in what we had and that she couldn’t manage her emotions as well as mine. She talked about how we stopped talking, her parents left, and how she “didn’t want to have nothing” so she started dating that guy. She brought up the “best date of her life” with me and how if it happened with anyone else she would have ubered home instead of sitting under a ledge for an hour in the rain talking. She mentioned how she never had a connection like ours and admitted that we had been dating/seeing each other. She mentioned how she didn’t want me to be a rebound, that she cares for me much more than that and respects me too much for it. When she left she hugged me and wouldn’t let me go, told me I’m her person and knew she had to break up with the guy she’s been seeing. She called me after leaving and told me that I knew her better than anyone. That weekend she ended things with that guy and reached out to me. We spent 2 days making each other laugh over phone and text…
…and then she pulled back. She said she had been a crying hermit of a mess after the breakup. I knew the reason why. I knew he was trying to make things work with her. She started to become distant again and rude. She wrote that she was trying to decide whether to work things out with him and to not add anything to her plate. A man who had lied to her about still being married and tried to hide a DUI from her. A man who went through her phone to see if she was talking to me and who got a ride from a friend to show up to a place she went to avoid him. I was determined not to go through the silence process again so I drove to her work and met her after she was done. We sat in her car and she told me about how we can never be together, that it can never happen. She said she fell in love and I should know how she feels. When I asked why she almost yelled “because you’re in love with me”. When I told her that wasn’t what me confronting her was about, that I wasn’t there to make her choose she said she needed to figure out that he wasn’t any good on her own. We continued to talk on the phone with her explaining that his excuse for the panic attacks was because he lied to her and it made him feel so bad he couldn’t breathe…and she was buying it. She asked me why I couldn’t have been so confident in “us” when we were seeing each other. What I started to realize at that point and maybe prior to it is that she isn’t ready, but telling her that would do no good. I wanted to ask her why “if we could never be” does it then matter why I’m so confident now but wasn’t then, but ultimately it didn’t matter so I didn’t ask. We ended the conversation and in a moment of anger/disappointment I texted her and told her that I’m safe for her, always will be, but she used me to get over the initial hump of the need to initiate the breakup. I told her not to respond and I blocked her on everything.
Unfortunately, or fortunately maybe, I’m not the type of person who can just cut someone off. I ended up texting her that weekend and she answered immediately. I called her and we talked a little bit. She said she wanted to hear me out but it had been a long week as she had decided to end things with that guy for good. We texted and spoke a little bit during that week. The following weekend I asked her to watch a game(our teams are rivals) and she said she already had plans and couldn’t, but she would if she hadn’t made plans. She texted me later that evening and I didn’t reply. The next day she called(im convinced it was because I never answered her;it’s a pattern) me after work to joke about our teams. She also asked me if she knew this guy who had been messaging her on Facebook from our league because he asked her out on his boat. We discussed hanging out that weekend and she mentioned that she had been set up on a date by her friend but she didn’t want to go and she didn’t want to date anyone for awhile. She brought up something I had told her in car, that she was an enigma because she was terrified of commitment and couldn’t be alone. She said that made a lot of sense to her. She compared me to a childhood friend of hers and said that’s what she wants with me, but her and I have never been “just friends” and certainly not childhood ones.
Two days later she is on match with her formerly anonymous profile. I texted her and asked her what happened to not dating for awhile. She said “trust me I’m not looking for anything serious”, that it’s just for casual dating. When I told her she couldn’t do casual she laughed and said she is going to try because she’s so jaded it doesn’t matter. She needed a distraction from her breakup. We argued a little and I ended up sending her an email laying everything out. In it I told her that it’s not about us being together as I don’t believe she’s ready. I explained to her that she needs to be alone for a while that any relationship we have, be it friends or more, needs to be healthy. She replied to it with anger and about how she wasn’t cutting me off(that wasn’t an issue in the email). I replied to her that her response was so self-absorbed I wondered whether she actually read the email. I ended it by telling her someday she may be capable of understanding why I wrote it and what I said in it, but that I doubt I’d be around for it. I wished her luck.
Three days later she added a guy to FB. A week after that she changed her profile pic to a picture of flowers. When someone asked her who they were from she liked the comment and didn’t answer. A few days after that she made a post on Facebook that was almost like a note to her dead fiancé on his birthday. She started it with “hey babe”, and you wouldn’t know it was to someone who has been dead for years until the end. A couple days after that, she posted a pic of being on a date and saying “what could be better?”. Last weekend he tagged her in a photo of the 2 of them in which he said nothing gets better than this. Everyone who has seen it described her having a forced/fake smile. They also commented that most people her age don’t post date photos on FB with people they just started seeing. Today they were tagged in photos of an event that went to yesterday. She looks happy to the general eye, but as someone who truly knows her, she looks uncomfortable and out of place.
So there it is. The odd thing is that I don’t want to be with her, and while I may miss talking to her at times, I know the pattern that will eventually unfold. I truly mean what I said, that she needs to be alone and work things out for herself first. Anything between us, on any level would have to be healthy, which means time, time, time. I guess I’m wondering whether it sounds like someone with BPD. Her dating history screams that she can’t be alone, runs very hot and cold, had mood swings etc…I attributed this to the ridiculous amount of tragic things she has had to deal with, outside factors, but after much reflection and after writing this I don’t see it that as the overriding reason. Her penchant for rebound relationships alone screams…something. In the 3 years we have known of, or hung out with each other, she has dated 6 men that I know about. She has “good friends” that she once confided in me about how they don’t do what good friends would do. They barely did anything for her after her surgery and all they wanted to do was go drink. One of them is someone who is anti-relationship. Every time one goes south with my potential BPD she runs and cries with her, they get drunk and within a few weeks she’s “dating” again. It’s the same thing every time.
Any thoughts?
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