Cheating.. sign of BPD?.. will it happen again?

[maybe2morrow]

So I recently found out that a girl I was with for 10months was cheating on me prior to breaking up with me a few months ago. She came home for a few weeks at the end of July (we were long distance) and I found out she had been talking to a guy she worked with about 3 weeks before she broke it off with me in June. Her reasons for breaking up with me were that she didn't want to be attached to anyone at the moment, but still loved me and wanted to be fully committed to be one day and that there was no one else (which was a lie)

She admitted to kissing this other guy but nothing else. I want to believe her but it is really hard to at this point. She was really shocked when she knew I found out and became really upset. She confided in me that she really didn't like this guy and didn't see it going anywhere at all. She just enjoyed the attention and newness and it was hard to resist. She admitted that she couldn't control her impulses and it was almost like she was feeding a drug addiction. All the while she was talking to this guy she continued to talk to me. She would still call me and tell me that she loved me and was excited about seeing me soon even though we weren't together anymore. 

After all this was out in the open we decided that we could still see each other while she was here visiting. She stopped talking to this other guy as soon as I found out about him. Everytime we see each other we become closer than we did before. We spent a lot of time together the 3 weeks she was here and it was great. I told her that I forgive her for what she did but if it happens again I am gone and I'm not looking back. She understands where I'm coming from and is working really hard at the moment to gain my trust back.

I have been nothing but good to this girl and it really hurts that she would do something like this to me but I'm not sure she can help it. She has really low self-esteem and I really don't think she has a grasp on who she really is. She really doesn't know what she wants to do with her life and feels she needs to move to different places to find herself, but never does. She also mirrors a lot of her female friends at work by dressing and acting like they do. She also mirrors me at times... it's quite odd because I am not that way at all. She has also never been single for more than 3 months and has told me she likes being with someone.

The beginning of our relationship moved quite quickly and the "I love you's" came about 3 months into the relationship. She is also in contact with all of her ex-boyfriends, which I thought was kind of weird too. I think she craves the honeymoon phase and once that is over she finds it hard to stay in the relationship and seeks out that feeling from a new partner. Which is what I think happend in my case. I could sense the push and pull from here about 6 months in and she admittied to me as she was breaking up with me that some days she loves me to death and others she questions if being with me is the right thing for her at this time in her life. I could always sense she felt this way by her hot and cold behavior towards me. She also gets very jealous of the friends I have at work that are girls, quite the double standard.

She is now back at her job 2,000+ miles away from where I am (which is where she is from too) and I can't help but worry this will happen again and she will hide it from me once again. Also, if I never would have caught her, what would have happend? would she have continued on with this guy? I am sort of lost at the moment since we aren't together but we kind of are... it's all very confusing. I love this girl a lot, we just get along really well, she's like my best friend. When I ask her what she sees happening between us in the future, she says she sees herself marrying me one day but a part of me see's

No really sure if she is BPD but a lot of signs are pointing to that. If so, I want her to get help.


Any insight would be appreciated. Thanks

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[gtrhr]

OK here is my totally off the cuff response so take it with a grain of salt.  Curious what others have to say about it... .

What you describe sounds in some ways similar to something I went through with a girl I dated in my mid twenties.  We met while I was doing work-study in college so sometimes I lived in the same city as her, and others times I lived about two hours apart and were long distance for some years.  :)uring one phase she tried date some guy friends during the week and wanted to leave me for religious reasons.  She was extremely hypocritical that inin her mind it's OK to not be faithful and honest to your boyfriend as long as he isn't "Christian."  Even though morally and as part of my family beliefs I was raised in that vain.

I unfortunately allowed myself to suffer through this early on when I started dating and it's caused me issues later in life.  I REALLY wish I had nipped all of this in the bud back then and not allowed myself to be treated that way by her.

She had self esteem issues as you described and was doing some soul searching of her own it seems.  She was even admittedly using me for sex because the guys who went to her religious school wouldn't have sex with her.  She always had to have a boyfriend.  And she had been engaged once.

Would I describe her as a borderline?  Not exactly.  Granted my father told me, "look she's f*****d up, get angry about it and get over her."  Which was frankly good advice and he was right, she was.

I would say she was a lot like the girl you're dating in that she didn't have a strong sense of self at that time.

And neither did I quite frankly as she was my first love and I had really poor boundaries.  The thing I regret most about that relationship is taking her back after the first time she broke up for religious reasons, after she and I had already become physically intimate.  It was a huge mistake to allow her to enter and exit the relationship as she saw fit.

Sorry to answer your story with a story of my own, but I'm kind of just pointing this out as what you're getting into with this girl could be the origins for more drama (which she and I definitely had) involving other men later on.  Which is when I consider she just dumped me out of the blue after we had committed to be together not even one week prior.  You know this person wanted to become my facebook friend in the past year which I allowed.  And she really has no recollection of some of the really messed up things she did.  Something isn't right there for sure!

Wow, two thousand miles away!  You have cause to be worried. She's been secretive and untrustworthy before and kept you around as comfort or like a backup.  That's not fair to you while she auditions other guys and might be looking for a less geographically challenging courtship.

As far as the Borderline thing.  I haven't heard you say that she's really moody, claims to love you one minute, then hates you the next.  Baits you into arguments.  Puts you down, belittles you, verbally, or physically abuses you.  You can't tell up from down, right from left anymore because she twists facts around etc etc.  :)o you feel it bounces between being a toxic relationship and sometimes pure bliss?  Obviously borderline is more complicated than that but you understand what I mean.  She could be but it doesn't sound quite like that intense dynamic from your post.

You mentioned she appears to be trying hard to make amends at least.  The thing that could be in doubt is how sincere is that?  Is she doing that just to string you along?  Those are questions that can be hard to answer.  

As far as cheating goes, I've been on the other end too and been the one doing it.  In fact the person I cheated with was the borderline and my behaviors might have seemed borderline, but it was only by proxy.  My ups and downs were all about riding the roller coaster with her.  I was more co-dependent.

Your girlfriends mirroring and stuff actually sounds more co-dependent which is what I would say my college girlfriend was like too.  Anyhow that's my best attempt not really knowing you or her or all of the details.  If you think of some really crazy things that she did then it might sway my opinion more to BPD!

[vortex of confusion]

I don't know about the BPD aspects of your friend. When you mentioned wanting to be in the honeymoon phase all of the time, it made me think of a sex and love addict. A love addict is somebody that is basically addicted to those feelings of being in love. After a while, those excited feelings wane and the addict gets bored and looks for another fix. I am not as familiar with love addiction as I am with sex addiction. My husband's thing was porn. It eventually led to cheating and posting ads online. For the record, I cheated too but for very different reasons. One day he would tell me that he was deleting all of his ads and the next day he was putting them back up again. Him putting them up again was usually precipitated by something that I did that was not in line with what he wanted. For example, he would get lonely at work and be unable to get me on the phone or via email so he would post an ad. If I had a friend to talk to and he didn't, he would post an ad. The whole time he was supposedly attending SAA meetings and working through the steps. He did the first step and then slipped back into posting ads and lying about it.

So, if your friend's behaviors are driven by an addiction to sex or love and she has not sought help, then I can almost guarantee you that it will happen again and again and her behaviors will likely escalate over time.