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Skills we were never taught
98
A 3 Minute Lesson
on Ending Conflict
Communication Skills-
Don't Be Invalidating
Listen with Empathy -
A Powerful Life Skill
Setting Boundaries
and Setting Limits
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Chaoticgood71
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What is your sexual orientation: Straight
Who in your life has "personality" issues: Romantic partner
Posts: 2


« on: October 30, 2016, 02:37:05 PM »

I'm a guy in a relationship with a much younger girl diagnosed, so she says, with 'everything under the sun' and it is not going well half of the time and other times it is.  I've done a lot of reading trying to help her and us and have come to the conclusion that she either has BPD or her past traumas, and she has many, have given her many of the traits that could be recognized as BPD.  She can have some serious moments where she'd walk 6 miles to a nearby town in the middle of the night or go have a first-night sexual encounter.  She took off with a guy that basically terrorized her for 2 months and came back to me.  She doesn't trust men anymore like that but she has admitted that she's starting to care too much for me and needs to leave, including a 12 day walk/hitchhike to Florida.

She put the leaving date off and now, she packed her travel bag in the closet seeming sunny and talking about doing things in the future again.  I don't think it was a bluff that she wants to leave but seems to have changed her mind... .for now.

No one to talk to about all of this and the one good (female) friend that I have is more than reluctant to do anything, actually refuses to help, but will still talk to her like she's one of the girls and I'm the 'guy'.  I told her to stop.

So, that's my situation.  How you all doing?
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PLEASE - NO RUN MESSAGES
This is a high level discussion board for solving ongoing, day-to-day relationship conflicts. Members may appear frustrated but they are here for constructive solutions to problems. This is not a place for relationship "stay" or "leave" discussions. Please read the specific guidelines for this group.

livednlearned
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Gender: Female
What is your sexual orientation: Straight
Who in your life has "personality" issues: Family other
Relationship status: Married
Posts: 12865



« Reply #1 on: October 30, 2016, 03:24:55 PM »

Hi Chaoticgood71,

It sounds like she has an impulsive streak for sure. And is not afraid to walk long distances. 

How long have you two been together? How many years difference between you two? No judgment, only curious if she may be working out some punitive parent type stuff on you.

What are things like between you two when she isn't disappearing (for lack of a better word)?

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Breathe.
Chaoticgood71
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What is your sexual orientation: Straight
Who in your life has "personality" issues: Romantic partner
Posts: 2


« Reply #2 on: October 30, 2016, 07:51:06 PM »

Well, the backstory is that I was living in my car in Florida (make money, child support wouldn't allow me to afford a place down there) and I came across her barely clothed properly (when she stood up, I saw straight down to her waist) with a sign begging for change.  I tend to help people.  It's my thing.  I would typically, with this sort of situation, hit a thrift store and drop off the clothing.

Something was different here and I offered her the passenger seat of my car while we were eating Chinese.  Something else I don't do, taking someone for food.  And it wasn't for any definable reason that I could voice and still can't.  She talked about sleeping under a tree with a opossum the size of a large cat waking her up.  I took her shopping, something else I don't do, for bras and underwear.

She is 18 and I'm in my early 40s.  I took to her in a very protective role and realized that she needed real help to get her life together.  A lot of balls were dropped with her.  No ID, kicked out of school, not any form of identification at all.

Within a week of meeting her, I decided that I would help her and to do that, I'd need to get my own act together.  We took off on the road for Ohio where I knew I could afford things, get a better job, and have family to help.  I don't ask for help.

Somewhere along the line, settling down to sleep in a parking lot, she leaned her head against my chest looking up.  I realized what she was doing and shook my head saying, "I don't think this is a good idea."  That will power lasted for a record 3 minutes.  I beat myself up about it but she insisted on a relationship after the fact.

We arrived in Ohio and the family help didn't happen the way that I expected.  Stayed in my brother's old place with no water or electricity at the start.  Never water.  We were living like squatters and I worked an hour away for 12 hours a day.  It was not a good situation but it was meant to be temporary.

I'd seen her swing just on the drive up there.  Before that, I knew she lied about a great many things.  I've been through a lot of s*** and I'm not too stupid, either.  So, I told her that "there are stories for survival, I'm good with that.  Then there are lies.  Try to remember the difference."  I can read people really well and then asked, "Should I hide my money?"  She asked me why.  "Because you're thinking about taking off when I'm asleep.  I made you uncomfortable talking the difference between stories and lies."  She denied it and then she conceded that she was thinking about going back to where she was sleeping.  She then told me that she might be a lot of things, but she didn't steal from people.  Unless they deserved it.  She never did steal from me.

She could, especially after we became physical, get angry and smoldering for no reason that I could figure out.  Some slight imagined or not, and it was on.  Cold shoulder and then threatening to leave the car or the trailer if I didn't stop and leave her alone about what was wrong.  It turned out that that kind of had a frequency of about three days to a week.  She does NOT have a poker face and she was with a guy that could read people like Tim Roth in Lie to Me.  And she calls me Sherlock for a reason.

She hated that.  Still does to a degree.

The games and lies took a new life when I started working.  12 hour days, with the drive, she was left alone in what we ended up referring to as the Amitiville Trailer 14 hours a day two off and two off.  From the first day, she started.  And the place just had a yuck vibe to begin with... .we called it the Amitiville for good reason.  I worked in a place that left me coming home to patch myself up almost every day.  She would have some new thing that I'd notice, and having been married to a cheat, they were ringing familiar bells.  And she was over-the-top with some of the things.  She was meeting people that I did not know about.  Even out in the rural area, she would leave when I went to work, skipping her sleep medication like she always did when she had 'plans' the next day and thinking I wouldn't notice.

I wanted truths.  And in trying to get them, I started seeing, especially toward the end of that first go around that while those around her dropped a lot of balls, she had a good way of setting fires to bridges.  She wasn't just abandoned by all those she knew, she'd made herself alone in a good many ways.  No real family to go to, no real friends, and to her, back then, it was all a game to her.

She left one night around 2 AM.  Walking.  I caught up with her and barely talked her back into the car.  She left three days later around the same time, proudly told me on the phone she'd slept with a guy, came to get her stuff with two guys that did not step out of their vehicle because I told them they best not.  A week later, she called me to come get her if I would.  I did.  The guy lived in a tent behind Walmart.  I told her that was not a highlight of her life and needed to get tested.

She asked me why I would take her back.  The answer was obvious.  She felt ashamed but the anger came back in a week and she got a ride to town where she ended up stepping in front of a car and got 911'd for a suicide attempt.  Most likely, it was a guy that she wanted attention from and didn't get it or he saw the drama there... .I stopped at the ER on the way to work to see her.  She was surprised, gave me a huge hug, but 45 minutes before I was to pick her up from town... .she texted me that she was going to hang out with the 'girls' and might not be home until morning.  "You don't know any girls."  She hid where she was, stopped texting, and the next morning told me she'd had sex with a 'better man' and proceeded to talk about me in what could be embarrassing ways with the guy.

She didn't come to get her stuff and took off with him, I think her vicious swing went in the other direction and she couldn't face me, so left with a guy that panhandled for a living and traveled.

I had tried to show her that life is not a game.  That most people that show sympathy usually have a reason for doing so.  There were too many parasitic people and predators out there that would see her being the victim as chum in the water, coming at her with a shark's smile.  The surface kindness stops when they start wanting her clothes off.

Despite her moments, she's had a beautiful spirit.  A wonder about the world.  Over two months, despite being blocked on messenger, and so on, I kept contact with her though it was mostly one-sided.  I could sense that it wasn't completely her choice to do so and I could hear it in some of the ways she worded things to me when she would randomly email or text.  I could also tell when the texts weren't hers, but his.  I played it very carefully.

She eventually escaped this guy.  I probed him about what had happened to her, fearing the worst since she'd just disappeared on him, stolen something of some value from him, he being very angry about that.  As bad as she could be, she asked me before leaving with a toothbrush, so told him that.  She stole because she had to and he probably deserved it.  I tracked her to a traveling carnival.  She found work but was let go because she couldn't manage her angry reaction to certain customers.  She was escorted from the property and not paid.  I came across a text between her and her 'brother' who suggested she resort to prostitution.

From what I can put together, she did just that once.  It was not a gentle experience.  And for all of what she'd gone through already with the traveling moron, someone that had abused her and sexually at that, hit her in the face with one of her moments 'as a test', a week before she escaped him... .this was one step too far for her.  It was one of my emails that I'd written, worded right I guess, and that I had left the Amitiville (I stayed there because with her gone, I quit that hellish job until I found something else), that she texted me that she wanted to come back.

I got together enough money to Greyhound her back and pay for a cab to get her there.  She asked me more than once if I was really going to be there to pick her up.  I think she expected cruelty in abandoning her that way.  When I found her there, and she made it even more difficult by missing two busses... .She had lost her wonder of the world.  She came back with new fears, new behaviors, sunk in upon herself, and distant.  Cold in ways.

She tried to recreate the 'movie moment' kiss with me.  It worked.  That's the night I needed her phone to find out about the prostitution attempt.  That created a wedge between us that is still there.  She told me that night that for me to see her that wrong would break her.  I actually believe she meant it.

Since then, we're physically distant in sexual ways.  I probe but I don't press.  I finally got the help that I needed and have an apartment.  We moved in less than a month ago.

I dote a bit.  I am not typically an openly affectionate person.  I am with her.  I work and then I come home and I cook.  This morning, for instance, she had bacon (her fave) and eggs scrambled in the grease.  She gets a back rub, or any rub, every night.  She is treated like a princess.  But a princess that I help put in the direction to better herself.  But this is still all so turbulent.  She attempted an OD and spent 7 days of the second week in the mental facility.  Because she told me that her friends told her she's giving up her life here and I told her that 80% of how someone sees you is how you want them to see you.  Control your conversation or tell me how you are really feeling.

Later, she attempted to recreate the leaving situation that resulted in her leaving with the last 'better guy'.  I told her she was doing so and should I be worried and I really didn't need to deal with that kind of thing.  I had to stop by the DMV and it was when I was late from work, she didn't know I needed to go there, she 911'd out of the place in the mean time.  She left me with a seriously harsh suicide letter on the computer about how I 'killed her'.

She also left FB open with the only message like this to her absent father about only being with me because she had nowhere else to go.  I didn't bring that up with her until her one friend who... .we talked, she cut and pasted, and that was in there.  I figured she caught it.  So, I mentioned it and it upset her I'd looked at her messages.  She knew I'd looked at them but to have seen that bothered her.  I told her I'm going home and she asked me why.

Duh.

We made up.  Again.  She always and always has the option to better herself with her time with me.  That to play me is not necessary.  But to play me is crossing a line, this doesn't have to be a relationship, but playing me like that, especially again, breaks this down.

She insists it does even if she's uncertain about it sometimes.

The other day, she asked for a pen to start her diary.  That next morning, I woke for work and putting on my shoes, found a spiral notebook literally under my nose.  It read about the day and then I saw my name and how she wished I'd be more forceful with my attentions.  to lift her chin for a kiss or to put her against a wall to do the same.

For all that she's been through and how men only see her value as sexual, or that's how she sees how men see her, I refrained from the obvious.  She has had problems seeing herself as attractive or sexy or anything like that sort of thing all women should feel about themselves.  I had trouble being sexual with her, myself, when I doubted my own intentions.  That I could be wrong for her in that way... .thinking I should be more 'knight' than 'lancelot'.  Yes, intended pun... .

She was on vid chat with her 'brother' so I messaged her in a way that I want to be more physical again, and that she 'drives me crazy'... .She said that she wasn't ready and to try to understand.  I have the 'play' concern still there.  I don't want to be a 'paper boyfriend'.  And I don't like being used.  So, I mentioned the mixed signals.  'Want me to be assertive or not?'  'If you want me to have more control, give some up'.

She asked, ":)id you read my diary?"

I told her that already and no it was a sheet of spiral notebook.

Huge affront.  Stayed up all night.  Skipped her sleep meds.  I woke to her telling me that she was leaving when the lease was up in May.  That she'd been thinking about it for weeks.  She had her aunt to stay with.  No and no, more lies.

I saw that she posted leaving on FB.  I came home in a 'mood' and giving her space.  She attempted to get my attention like I always give, but it wasn't until she started talking loudly on the phone with a guy about leaving Monday for a 12 day walk.  That got my attention.

I took the next night to push her out of her comfort zone, to talk to me about the things she runs from.  She 911'd out of here and came back the next morning.  I told her, "You confronted what you can't stand and guess what?  You didn't die.  We're still OK."  I told her that she CAN break this, but she's going to have to try.

We had a rough weekend but then this morning, she wouldn't stop talking to me when I was in a rare non-talking mood.  She followed me through the house.  She helped me with housework when she normally isolates.  (She's still wanting me to spend time reading memes and watching shows as I write this) she asked me to move my tool bags.  She couldn't lift them.  I started to put them where she told me to and I saw it would be atop of her travel bag in a narrow closet.  I asked her if she wanted to move it first.  She said, "No."  I turned to regard her for a moment.

I laid the two on them and she buried them more.  She later told me it was her symbolizing that she was staying.

She told me that she has this voice in her head when she starts getting close that she needs to run.  She cuts affection.  She wanted me to hate her and kick her out.  She admitted I called that right.

The entire night she would tell me to leave her alone.  If I was quiet for 10 minutes, she would suddenly say something like, "I'm thinking of unfriending you on FB.'  I'm strong-willed but affectionate to her, too.  I simply responded, "That's fine.  I'll probably do that when you leave anyway."

She's been needing me all day.  I'm on here and she wishes I was with her.  I told her when I'm done.  She made me promise.

So... .is this BPD?  PTS?  Immaturity?

I'll be frank and I'm going to curse so that you get it... .We're both ___ed up in ways.  Our histories.  Our childhoods.  Two songs that work for me work for her, too.  Hush and Moth.  I was surprised that she took to them as much as I could.  But she does like they're memories.  Much like they can be for me.

There's a reason why I can walk out to a truck with two men inside, ready to take my girl away, and tell them to stay right there and not get out.  And for them to listen despite what she may have said to them about me.  Two people get my soft side.  She's one.  The rest get what I'm capable of.

I'm really not gentle.  But also, I'm one of the last bastions of chivalry.  To those that I love.  To her.  She said that she doesn't understand why I'm so kind and understanding with her.  I'm not that sort of person.  But I am to her.  That it annoys her.  By annoy, it means a reason to piss her off and lash out.  She hates it almost as much as I can read her.

She wants to run because of that and, as she says, because she's starting to care too much.

So, there it is.
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