My real story

[Isallofthisreal]

Hi everyone, this is my second post, and after reading some of your stories, I'd like to tell you mine, it's going to be a bit long...sorry!

I'm a 35-year-old "guy" with a high-profile job that requires a lot of responsibility (for real). I come from a wonderful family. My parents love each other, there was never any abuse or betrayal, and everything I know about love I learned from them...

I'm in a relationship with a beautiful 25-year-old woman who has a great job at a large company. She comes from an extremely toxic and dysfunctional family, which she identifies as the root cause of her "problems."
Our relationship is trapped in a cycle of "you're the love of my life" followed by "you're the worst person I've ever met."
This cycle has been going on for two years now.

I've seen every red flag since we started dating, but I chose to stay against the advice of my friends who said, "Why don't you run away? You could have anyone, more stable person!"  My mind often agrees with them, my whole body tells me she's the right woman for me.

I've been in therapy since before I met her (my job requires a lot of stability and I decided to seek support five years ago), and she started therapy a year and a half ago to talk about problems with her family, not because of problems with me. Up until then, everything was fine, but then the crises began.
According to her therapist, "I wasn't good for her; not all people are compatible; she should try to repair her relationship with her father," and so she began to reconnect with her family. She became extremely suspicious of me, started checking out women on my social media, and would start arguments based on jealousy strictly arguing she wasn't jealous at all.
She often broke up with me, only to regret it and come back within 12-24 hours. 
After one of these discussions I was completely confused, nothing seemed to make any logical sense, everything seemed the opposite of how I've always lived my life and I ridiculously decided to copy our messages, about 200, and paste them into to Google Gemini with the message "help me understand what's going on?" .. it seems stupid but it was Gemini who told me for the first time about BPD, DBT, splitting and so on.  So I changed my approach, I read 6 books that talked about BPD, I started putting the suggestions into practice and some of them worked sporadically and I also started investigating what she was doing in therapy and I discovered that she was doing EMDR and that the only diagnosis she had was an "anxiety disorder"... I expressed my doubts to my therapist who confirmed that "maybe an anxiety disorder treated with EMDR sounded unusual" without ever talking to me about BPD... so I decided to ask my girlfriend if she wanted to start couples therapy where I made sure the therapist was specialized in BPD.
In the six months of couples therapy, she felt better in the hours following the therapy, she left the room happy, she felt understood, she was enthusiastic but after a few weeks (usually 3) there were some nasty arguments... in the end she decided to end both her individual therapy and couples therapy... officially because it was too expensive (as a old school man, i was paying for the couples therapy) but this decision strangely came after a disappointment at work for which she blamed me partly.

During the last session with the couples therapist, where I was alone, I asked the doctor to be more clear with me because I was convinced my girlfriend had borderline personality disorder. The doctor said that in the six months of therapy she hadn't been able to give a specific diagnosis, but that she also believed that the individual therapy my girlfriend had undergone hadn't been adequate, because she had very strong traits of borderline personality disorder, with ADHD and OCD traits. A psychiatric evaluation, perhaps with pharmacological help, would have been very helpful. She also told me that, given her family history, she was actually lucky: she had never harmed herself, and she didn't have extreme sexual behaviors or substance abuse, but she did have severe emotional dysregulation.

Officially, BPD has never been diagnosed...if it makes any difference

Over the next 4 weeks, we went on vacation and spent quality time together. We started planning to look for a house to rent together, and everything was going well. One day, while we were looking at a house we had our heart set on, we realized it wasn't what we expected, and we were disappointed.
That same day, she was diagnosed with some health issues that required testing, and this was causing her a lot of stress.
That same evening, she grabbed my phone and started scrolling through conversations, opening every chat that had a photo of a woman (sometimes it was colleagues telling me they'd be late for work or asking me work informations, sometimes women I didn't respond to, other times it was my cousin). She ended up with an 8-month-old conversation where I was venting to a woman about "why I'd been dumped even though I'd never cheated on anyone."...in those days I had been dumped and I needed to talk to someone in my same situation. This message sparked the argument.  I was called "half a man, disgusting, a traitor, the worst being in the world" and she threatened me to leave.
Ufortunately I lost control, my body collapsed, I had a panic attack, I punched the car door few times, I pulled my hair, I cried desperately....and in the end I screamed at her with all my lungs to get out of my car and disappear from my life.

I'm really ashamed of this, I'd never lost control like this and I was afraid of hurting myself, maybe hitting a glass or something not because I wanted to... I didn't know who I was anymore. I was desperate... my individual therapist told me a few months ago that I was exhibiting signs of C-PTSD (I slept poorly, I deleted myself from all social media, I quit the gym, I almost never saw my friends and I was often dissatisfied with my life). When I had the emotional breakdown, she changed her attitude, she tried to be there for me but all I wanted was for her to disappear from my life.
I kept telling her like a broken record, "I want to go home, please go away" and so after an hour she eventually got out of the car...

She sent me several messages telling me she apologized for dragging me into her abyss, that she would do anything to restart the relationship, she would resume therapy and that she didn't mean all the things she said.  I haven't replied to any messages, and now after 3 days I feel lost... really... and saying these words is tearing me apart. I don't know what to do.

Sorry if this story is so long... but it's the first time I've written down everything that happened...

 I need to talk.

[PLEASE - NO RUN MESSAGES]

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.