This is my message to all Men/Women currently in a relationship with a woman/man with BPD/NPD - RUN AWAY AS FAST AS YOU CAN.
Let me resonate with/humour/educate you with my story. It’s a long one, so totally understandable if you don’t make it to the end, but if you want the
MAIN JUICE of the story, skip towards the end.
Quick Intro:
I am M24 from the UK and have just broken up with my pwBPD F24 for the 7th or 8th time during our 3years and 10 months together (on and off). I was lucky to have had a beautiful up-bringing by my loving and caring single mother, who brought me up with the up-most respect for women, close family values and strong empathy for others.
My pxBPD and I met in a club during university, immediately she mirrored all the shallow things I looked for in a partner: sexy, confident, likes to party, sexually confident etc… At the time, as a red-blooded 21 year old this won me over very quick.
Quick background about her, she grew up with no father and a horrific mother, who is totally delusional and narcissistic. Police have been involved in the past and both her and her brother have been in care. She has some sexual abuse as a child from an uncle as well. So ultimately - poor girl, but I’ve come to realise it doesn’t excuse everything that followed.
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Within the first 2 weeks she had told me I was her ‘soulmate’ and that she loved me (love bombing). Being completely naive at the time, I was just totally complimented by this and completely oblivious to the fact it's a MASSIVE GAPING RED FLAG. And because I was a hopeless romantic, I too fell in love with her very quickly.
Anyway the honey-moon period (as good as it was) didn’t last long, we met in May 2017, by the end of summer (September) her behaviour started to slip and by November 2017 I was already looking up emotional abuse on the internet. I actually have the first note on my phone listing some of the strange things she’d done which I couldn’t explain or understand in November 2017. Here are a couple, i’m sure you can resonate…
• Negative Comments about food I make her, extremely fussy with food
• Loud /violent outbursts
• Not willing to do anything she didn’t want to do.
• Extremely spontaneous/impulsive
• Dangerous near roads and cars
• says “NEGATIVE” every time i try to voice an opinion or share my feelings that require her to acknowledge her behaviour
The list goes on… and this was only 6 months into the relationship. I should have packed my bags and ran but no. The adventure continues…
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So periodically for the rest of the relationship we laughed, loved,, fought, abused and despised each-other. And the fun thing is - when the cycle got to the end, we got to start it all again. And let me tell you as you allllll must know, the make up sex and activity with a boarderline person is a real life changer. The type of you get ADDICTED to. And I am/was addicted to it. Like a junky on smack. Honestly, I unfortunately think I had some of the best times of my life with this girl, but would 10% good for 60% okay and 30% absolute horror and agony be worthwhile over a lifetime? What do you think.
Anyway, If you’re new here, key words such as SPLITTING explains the behaviour that brought an end to the cycle mentioned above, and charmING explains the behaviour that starts it off again. I won’t go into detail about these because if you know about BPD then you know.
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During all this drama (abuse), I felt changes happening in myself. I stopped going to the gym, my confidence started to slip and I became the absolute epitome of a doormat. Also my friends and family realised what was going on and recognised her behaviour, despite me not being able to make sense of it, and when i could, just deny the truth and make excuses for her.
My research on how I felt from her behaviour led me to self-diagnose her with “something” and I finally convinced her to seek out counselling/therapy for her depression/anger/suicidal thoughts. She went and was diagnosed with BPD around Feb 2018. GREAT! I thought, finally she can get some help. I spent my whole relationship catering to her every need and mood, so all I was all in focused on was getting her help and improving her life (at the start). Because I deeply loved her and pleasing her made me feel good.
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3 more years of an absolute SHI**show relationship followed. My beautiful mother who I love dearly stopped wanting me to bring this girl round home with me when I visited because her behaviour was bad… In front of my mother? My pwBPD made me feel bad all the time for years after saying i was “Denying her the mother and family she never had”. I now know realise how wrong and emotionally abusive this is. I mean, all she had to do was behave, and I would have brother her home. But she couldn’t/wouldn’t even do that.
Some more fun things she did in those years include:
• Going on holiday with an older man when we just broke up, said they slept in separate rooms. I ended up catching her out because a picture of her in the room had a suitcase in it that wasn’t hers. HA! She then said they shared a room, but different beds and maintained nothing happened (yh right). But i took her back.
• Pulled steering wheel whilst i was driving because she didn't want to go to the particular super market we were going to to get food
• slapped me hard on one occasion in the face, scratched me HARDER on another occasion that left a scar on my nose that i will always have. Also, we stopped play- fighting within the first 6 months of the relationship because she would always take it way to far.
and honestly, theres hundreds of other things. Literally.
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THE JUICE.
So you get the gist, I have a close to identical situation to many many people here, nothing special. But significant, because this is fundamentally wrong. THESE PEOPLE WILL RUIN YOUR CHEMISTRY. You can get irreversibly messed ed up through long-term exposure to this kind of emotional abuse.
So fast-forward to last week (March 2021). Here in the UK we are currently experiencing a large increase in the call for more protective measures to keep women safe from men, following the death of a woman called Sarah Everard. May i just say I am TOTALLY for the protection of women, I love women. Most of you are wonderful, and men can be horrendous. So Yes, Women’s rights, women’s protection, all that. The relevance of this story will come in a second --->
My pwBPD arrived at my house Thursday evening, soon after which we had some stupid argument about food (a common theme for us) and also argued when we attempted to go outside together and go for a run the next morning. We agreed to go for a walk because i cant run at the moment due to a torn ACL. But no, she wanted to us to run. This sort of stuff though was nothing, I brushed this Sh** off like sand on my shoulder.
That evening though(Friday), my pwBPD and my best friend and I took a drive to get some alcohol to drink. It’s important to mention that my pwBPD has been following the women’s rights/protection movements very closely and had been bugging me to be more active on social media and show support.
In the car on the way back she asks my friend and I a question:
“Do you guys think it's appropriate to tell a girl that just sold you something on Facebook that you think she is hot afterwards?”
We both think for a second and collectively agree (and maybe naively/wrongly so) “yeah, i guess that’s okay”.
She dramatically corrected us and says “NO, WRONG. Because now you know where i live, and you could be a rapist etc etc etc…”
At this stage she was like a broken record with this stuff as she hadn't stopped talking about it since she arrived and neither my friend nor I are 1) rapey and 2) against women’s rights in anyway shape or form.
So frustrated with her pestering before our night which was supposed to be fun, I very mistakenly said: “Okay, pwBPD. You caught us out, would you mind just dropping it please?”
I should mention I said it almost gently in order to avoid the expected argument as I’m a 4 year veteran of treading on eggshells and not triggering her at this stage. But no, i’d said it and she honed in for the kill.
She replied “that’s rich coming from you who's basically raped me”.There was silence… I looked into my drivers mirror to see my best mate in the back raise his eyebrows and awkwardly look away, as he’d done many times in the presence of our constant bickering.
An argument erupted.
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Now theres things that she's done which i’ve excused. Truly terrible, malicious things. And I just let them pass. But this compromised my entire existence. It's not like she hadn't compromised my pride, dignity etc in the past by terrible behaviour in public or social situations. But na man, this was finally something that i perceived to truly be crossing the line.
I demanded to know when this supposed “forcing her against her will” happened to which she replied it had happened on holiday with my Brother and his gf in spain in summer 2018 (three years ago). The funny thing is, she had been an ABSOLUTE NIGHTMARE on that holiday (and every other one we went on for that matter) to the extent where we only had sex once I think.
But no, she maintained that I was extremely drunk, and forced her into it despite her saying no. Now my gut which I’ve ignored for the last 4 years told me this categorically didn’t happen. There’s been many a time where she had accused me of something minor that I couldn't remember which I just apologised for to keep the peace. But I wasn’t doing that here, no way was I apologising for or admitting to a rape I didn't do. That was ammunition I 100% was not willing to give.
As our argument continued, (no apology from her) she ended up saying that I was “the exact scum that women need to be protected from” etc etc, It was just flying out of her mouth, like it did when she became angry and *SPLIT on me. All in still in front of my mate btw.
After about 20 mins of it, She left. And for once, I didn't want to stop her. I felt like a cork stuck in my head had been pulled and I felt the pressure leave my skull. Usually when she left, I went into shock. She would block me on everything and my codependency would totally eat me up, leaving me in the fetal position until I was unblocked and she had made contact. But hahah no! This time I didn't even watch her leave.
This accusation was the last straw. The girl is mad. Especially, because:
1) she has tried to walk away from me in Prague when we were on holiday and told big scary men that i was following and harassing her (luckily they could tell what was going on)
2) she practically has a rape fantasy, she likes it hard and rough (yeah baby) but TOTALLY 1 million % consensual, just fantasy, do you see the danger here?
3) We have actually tried to see if I could rape her if i tried, In a totally consensual setting, just for a laugh you know? To which she could literally throw me off her or clench her legs so hard that there was no chance of penetration, unless someone held a knife or gun to her throat. She is inhumanly strong considering she is only about 5”5 and not overweight. I mentioned previously we stopped play fighting because there would always be blood or tears. So it’s safe to say, if I was forcing her to have sex, there would be a serious struggle. One that my brother would have heard and a commotion would have followed
The reason I knew this never happened opposed to other smaller questionable incidents and accusations I didn’t bother my brain with questioning, is because this would have been a seriously traumatic encounter and time to follow, and I remember VERY CLEARLY every single single single time we’ve had a fight or scenario on that level. The trauma hits me hard, and humans don't forget pain.
Usually, I would struggle with the *COGNITIVE DISSONANCE but not this time. Finally, after years of horror, the bitch had to go.
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“Every flag is red through rose tinted glasses”
Take off the glasses boys and girls. Smell the coffee. Listen to your gut. Just being on this site in the first place is wrong. Think hard and look internally something is wrong here. with your spouse, and also within you. You need to identify and heal. and then go on to live your life - happily.
These people have the power to ruin your lives. I actually can’t believe some people marry them, and even more baffling - have children with them? Holy Sh**, I can't even imagine what it would be like if I actually had any physical or financial responsibility attached to this relationship.
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Looking only forward now, and to the bright side, some good things that have come from it:
• I am now extremely well versed in some psychology topics, especially cluster B personality types
• Can spot emotional abuse a mile off
• I am now in therapy to identify why I allowed myself to sustain such repeated emotional damage and how i let my self-respect get so low (turns out I have my own separation issues stemming from a failed relationship with a distant father)
• I dedicate the rest of my life to building and enforcing healthy boundaries which will enable me to only have happy and healthy relationships.
• I have officially taken off the rose tinted glasses. No-one is fooling me again.
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So my fellow people, that is my long and painful story. Please get out. Honestly, don’t
PLEASE READ about. Yeah it could get slightly better if they dedicate the rest of their lives to consistently getting help in the form of DBT (Dialectical Behavioural Therapy), but even then, ‘slightly better’?
Fu** THAT!
I will check back in here periodically to update how my recovery goes, but honestly. I know deep down finally, like a drug addict finally ready, that it is over for me.
Good Luck, and thanks for reading!
A.A.
