The unfortunate trap of "Well BPDs love to cling to Narcissists!" (Autism)

[Family Court Strategies: When Your Partner Has BPD OR NPD Traits.]

Anyone here autistic AF?

Due to growing up in an incredibly invalidating home life (save that rant for another time), I ended up trying to "save people" as a young adult - all of which led to one of my "projects" telling me she had catastrophic drug-induced liver failure and had been removed from the transplant list due to her longstanding alcoholism and begging me to marry her...and yup, we married. I figured it was a "good deed", and why not - she was diagnosed BPD but in my youth I felt sure that was "just a label" and ultimately enough willpower and self-control could solve it. (Spoiler: Nope).

But one of the traps that seemed to ensnare people was that the "pop culture understanding" of BPD says "Oh, the only people who get into relationships with them are narcissists because they love the adulation when splitting cuts in their favour", but that seems lazy and overly speculative - lots of quotes in medical literature, not much peer-reviewed research. But then it's used for example in divorce and family court to say "Well we all KNOW what it means if someone married a BPD", when frankly...one of the most infuriating things to autists is when people confuse two conditions that are clinical opposites.

-Narcissists are deeply insecure, and fixated on people's perception of them - they act aloof and superior to avoid/hide a crippling self-esteem issue. They probably do like BPDs "positive splitting" more than most.

-Autistic (and/or Aspies) people are clinically unable to care what others think about them, their reputation is functionally irrelevant. They probably end up with BPDs more often than most simply because they don't run away after hearing "I think you're having an affair with your sister, I saw a baby in the park that looked like you, you're just like my Dad, I gave up on my one-week career as a stripper and now I'm thinking maybe a nun, you're like literally worse than Hitler because you are the most evil sociopath narcissist psychopath gaslighting hypochondriac agoraphobic lazy workaholic ever!!!"...whereas most people run away when the "bad split" happens - but autists are just like "well, there's zero truth to that, so why would I be bothered?".

Yet somehow I still run into this constant age-old bias that's crept up into the literature, the idea that BPDs and Narcissists end up together and nobody else can stand them, and if you know someone with BPD then their significant other must be a narcissist. My ex claiming I was a narcissist actually led to a forensic psychiatric examination of me that not only dismissed narcissism, but very politely said "he has the dead opposite of narcissism, this cracka be autistic AF and don't give a damn what she or anyone else thinks - she's simply a goodwill project he's worked on helping and allowing in his life in ways that seem perplexing to outsiders" (I'm paraphrasing)

It seems like a topic I haven't seen addressed on this forum much before, and the "Search" function is broken - so I'll just ask...anyone else noticed this?

[PearlsBefore]

Anyone here autistic AF?

Due to growing up in an incredibly invalidating home life (save that rant for another time), I ended up trying to "save people" as a young adult - all of which led to one of my "projects" telling me she had catastrophic drug-induced liver failure and had been removed from the transplant list due to her longstanding alcoholism and begging me to marry her...and yup, we married. I figured it was a "good deed", and why not - she was diagnosed BPD but in my youth I felt sure that was "just a label" and ultimately enough willpower and self-control could solve it. (Spoiler: Nope).

But one of the traps that seemed to ensnare people was that the "pop culture understanding" of BPD says "Oh, the only people who get into relationships with them are narcissists because they love the adulation when splitting cuts in their favour", but that seems lazy and overly speculative - lots of quotes in medical literature, not much peer-reviewed research. But then it's used for example in divorce and family court to say "Well we all KNOW what it means if someone married a BPD", when frankly...one of the most infuriating things to autists is when people confuse two conditions that are clinical opposites.

-Narcissists are deeply insecure, and fixated on people's perception of them - they act aloof and superior to avoid/hide a crippling self-esteem issue. They probably do like BPDs "positive splitting" more than most.

-Autistic (and/or Aspies) people are clinically unable to care what others think about them, their reputation is functionally irrelevant. They probably end up with BPDs more often than most simply because they don't run away after hearing "I think you're having an affair with your sister, I saw a baby in the park that looked like you, you're just like my Dad, I gave up on my one-week career as a stripper and now I'm thinking maybe a nun, you're like literally worse than Hitler because you are the most evil sociopath narcissist psychopath gaslighting hypochondriac agoraphobic lazy workaholic ever!!!"...whereas most people run away when the "bad split" happens - but autists are just like "well, there's zero truth to that, so why would I be bothered?".

Yet somehow I still run into this constant age-old bias that's crept up into the literature, the idea that BPDs and Narcissists end up together and nobody else can stand them, and if you know someone with BPD then their significant other must be a narcissist. My ex claiming I was a narcissist actually led to a forensic psychiatric examination of me that not only dismissed narcissism, but very politely said "he has the dead opposite of narcissism, this cracka be autistic AF and don't give a damn what she or anyone else thinks - she's simply a goodwill project he's worked on helping and allowing in his life in ways that seem perplexing to outsiders" (I'm paraphrasing)

It seems like a topic I haven't seen addressed on this forum much before, and the "Search" function is broken - so I'll just ask...anyone else noticed this?