BPD mother experimenting with sexuality

[cle216]

Hi all,

I feel like every time I post here I'm not quite sure what it is I'm looking for from the group. I just want to process these thoughts "out loud" with those who may have similar experiences or can offer some insight on how to be supportive while not escalating situations.

My mom has 7 failed marriages with men. Back in October she told me in a joking manner maybe she should just date women. She "just wants a friend" and, in details I will spare here, discussed how she couldn't see being sexually active with a woman. Now fast forward to last night. She started a conversation about men she is connecting with on match and then bluntly transitioned to saying she should just date women. She has been speaking to some women on the match app but hasn't met anyone yet. I shared with her that my personal views are that I'm 100% supportive of her exploring this and have no judgment on whatever her sexual orientation is. I asked about her statements back in October and she said she was just using humor because she was embarrassed and she has actually secretly found women attractive throughout her life.

I don't feel any struggle with this necessarily when it comes to the idea that she may be a lesbian. I am a grown nearly 40 year old woman and if my mom can find a healthy loving relationship with someone it makes no difference to me who it is. My concern or thoughts that I'm processing is that this feels like one more identity she is trying on or a "thing" she is diving in to without any thought. I worry about the risk of her hurting someone...and she made the point that anyone on these apps is at risk of having their feelings hurt or getting heartbroken. She's not wrong, but maybe you know what I'm trying to say. This just feels bigger or different than her past things of digging in to different identities through hobbies, political views, music, etc. Any thoughts that help me just reflect on this or process internally are appreciated. Bottom line is that I want to appear open and supportive of her in the case that this is legit and may bring her happiness she has not explored before.

[Notwendy]

I understand your concern and it's completely independent of sexual orientation or any judgement about that. With my BPD mother, she looks to an outside source for a solution to what she herself feels inside her. The outside source could be a number of things- a relationship, an expensive item, a vacation. Eventually that "outside thing" fails to solve her feelings because, that isn't the solution.

I share your concern about the other person, male or female, because to have a happy and emotionally healthy relationship with anyone, requires the person to be emotionally stable themselves. Your mother's relationships with men didn't make her happy, not because they were men but because she's disordered. Rather than look at herself, she now is considering that a woman could do what a man can't. More likely, no human can do that. We can't control what other people choose your mother but I share your empathy for them. They are adults though and will eventually have to figure that out for themselves. I think if I were in your shoes, I too would reassure my mother that she is free to choose who to love and it doesn't change how I see her. I would keep my skepticism to myself and not have expectations though.

Unfortunately, it's the BPD that can impact relationships, not gender or sexuality.

[kells76]

Hi cle216,

Glad you can process your thoughts out loud with us -- I can relate to doing that here. Sometimes I also don't even know if I have a question, I just need a place to talk through something that -- to someone who didn't know that BPD is involved -- would seem "normal" or "not a big deal". Yet because we know BPD traits/behaviors are in the mix, "normal" situations/changes can't be taken at face value.

I think I get what you're saying, that you wonder how much of this is "her true self" (for lack of a better phrase) vs another manifestation of the identity disturbance at the core of BPD.

I can share what I've observed with my H's kids' mom, who is in her 40s. When she and H were married, she confessed to H that she was attracted to H's best friend (male) and he to her. While their marriage was falling apart, both she and H reached out to the friend for "support". The friend ended up siding with her and before the divorce was final, they were dating. They were engaged 3-4 months after the divorce was final and married 3 months after that.

You would think that she "finally got what she wanted" or finally found the one true partner where she could really be herself, be happy, not be "held back" or whatever. Well, fast forward to now (~10 years later). Over the last year or so, the kids' mom and stepdad had been friends with another couple whose marriage was falling apart. Stepdad "helped" support them... and sided with the woman. That couple divorced, and apparently Stepdad/Woman had some kind of emotional affair that they hid (though poorly, as both H and I saw... stuff) from Mom. There was some kind of blowup between Mom & Stepdad and Mom left town for a few months... to stay with her sister who is in a poly relationship.

Mom came back to town and as far as we know, there is a new "setup" where the relationship is her, Stepdad, and Other Woman as some kind of poly setup. The OW is now the kids' "godmother". Mom & Stepdad bring the kids to see her sister's Other Man when they go on vacation -- I guess to reinforce how normal their new setup is?

I guess what I'm saying is -- the kids' mom started out as "homeschooling, churchgoing, warm, committed, SO IN LOVE WITH STEPDAD, SO COMMITTED" kind of person (persona?). Now, she is equally committed to her "love is love, you can't expect one person to make you happy, see everyone is in this kind of setup, you have to be free to be yourself, this is actually a more mature relationship" persona.

But is she happier?

Is this the "real" her?

Is this, finally, fortunately, the ultimate discovery of the perfect relational setup that unlocks true happiness that every other relationship kept from her in the past?

Or is this one more chapter in a life where, due to profoundly distorted perceptions and beliefs from BPD, she keeps expecting external things like relationships to provide her with the self and identity that she doesn't have inside?

...

It gets tricky when such sensitive topics like sexuality, orientation, preference, relational arrangements, etc, come up. Yet I think it's important to discuss openly, and with compassion, that if someone has BPD, then they likely experience a core, profound disturbance in having a healthy self. It's only to be expected that that challenge shows up in areas that touch on what it means to be Me as an individual. If BPD only showed up in superficial ways (clothing style) it wouldn't be BPD, it'd be like a teenager working through normal development. BPD is a profound enough mental illness that it impacts the sufferer's possibilty of knowing what it means to be a boundaried self. Instead, pwBPD may search for "self-ness" and identity through external supports... like through labels that hit at deeply personal facets (I'm this, I'm that, I'm straight, I'm gay, I'm someone who is attracted to women, I'm always a hero, I'm always XYZ), or like through having another relationship and expecting the other person to provide the "self-ness" so lacking in the pwBPD.

There is also a way in which both could be true at the same time. It certainly could be that your mom is truly attracted to women and now is just the time in her life where that's becoming clear. Yet, and maybe this is the roundabout thought I'm coming to... because she struggles with BPD, every facet of her life may be touched by that disorder. So, yes, she could be discovering something true about herself, and at the same time, because of how BPD impacts a sense of self, it isn't just about "who am I attracted to". I suspect it will be colored by her BPD lenses.

And that's to say that many areas of life are impacted by BPD perceptions. It isn't like if your mom were getting into oil painting, or organic foods, or lacemaking, or volunteering, or whatever, that because "those aren't about the self", then BPD wouldn't be involved. I think that many things a pwBPD gets into or identifies as or discovers, whether deeply personal (like sexuality) or seemingly innocuous (like lacemaking), can be impacted by the concurrent desire to "be a self" with an huge struggle to know how to do that. So, pwBPD may pick up innocuous things, hobbies, to look like someone else, to feel like that person, to have an external structure for being. It's not just about volunteering, it's because "all the kind people are doing it" or "my neighbor is doing it" or whatever -- coming from outside.

Has your mom had any "identity changing" behaviors in the past -- being "all about" something for a while, then dropping it?

...

Hopefully that's helpful discussion for your thoughts. I just want you to know that many people here have similar questions, and this is a respectful place to talk through those questions and have them out in the open. Glad you felt like you could open up and share.

...

Edit: cross posted with Notwendy, who said it much more succinctly

[Notwendy]

 My BPD mother has different personas as well. Since she was elderly when my father passed away, she has not been interested in another partner, so sexual orientation isn't one of her ideas. But I have seen her change entire personalities depending on who she's around. Her external  searches were whatever she set her mind on as the solution- the next vacation, the next item she wanted, the next thing we had to do.

She definitely prefers men though and around men, is very charming.

[Couscous]

No wonder you felt the need to post about this disturbing conversation with your mother — it’s so inappropriate for her to be having these kinds of discussions with you and a huge boundary violation. She seems to have you confused with her BFF…

Your post reminded me about this mother-daughter role play: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=S9wGful6SsA

[Notwendy]

No wonder you felt the need to post about this disturbing conversation with your mother — it’s so inappropriate for her to be having these kinds of discussions with you and a huge boundary violation. She seems to have you confused with her BFF…

Yes, it's not appropriate to discuss intimacy. I think at some point though, if this is a change, family needs to know something.

I think what I saw here was some glimmer of hope that maybe this could be a reason your mother has not had successful relationships with men and maybe this would be better. This situation does happen- I know some people personally who were in long term heterosexual relationships and then one day met someone of the same sex and had feelings for them. But these people were not disordered. They were able to have relationships in general and the discovery was something they needed to work out for themselves, not the pie in the sky solution to their relationship problems.

BPD impacts all relationships - and more so the closest ones-so it's more likely there's going to be more of the same drama. For my mother, her closest relationships now are the home health workers and these are not romantic at all, and she engages in drama with them.

As to inappropriate discussions, yes, there needs to be a boundary on that. I think it's fine to share what someone does on a date in general "we went to that new restaurant and it was good" but not relationship drama or intimate details. That will be on you to stop the conversation if it goes there.

[Riv3rW0lf]

My BPD mother overshared her sexual life with me a lot. The second I became active, she started sharing about what she had tried when she was in college, how many men she had had. I would call and she would say things like : "I couldn't answer earlier because I was (X,Y,Z) with your stepfather".

It was my normal, so I just assumed it was regular to talk about these things. Growing older though, you start to realize that people who focus on those details and overshare like that are seldom healthy. Even in men groups, I hear the players will be listened to a while, but no one really wants to hear the details. My H shared he tends to lose respect for those men if it keeps on going too long, and if they disrespect the women they are with, that it has to do with respect.

It is one thing to talk about sexual orientation and questioning it, and another to overshare what happens in the intimacy of a relationship. I now believe this had to do with her own lack of boundaries. She would talk about it with me, but also with stepfather's sister. And I think it all comes down to not being able to read the room. And wanting to look like the open mother who knows how to have fun. It was certainly the wrong model to give to her daughter, the model of an easy woman who gives herself away any chance she gets.

Questioning her sexual orientation might be lack of self, the continuation of her impulsives behaviors and lack of clear identity.

I also have one aunt that ended up in what seemed to be a relationship with another woman after both their husbands died. It wasn't sexual, she was about 65-70, and it had more to do with companionship. They felt like more than friends, they certainly were partners. They understood each other, having both lost their husbands, and they were always together. Now that I think of it, it ended when my aunt started having issues with her grandchildren and had to take them in. Anyway !

It wasn't that exciting thing, it didn't happen because she thought being with a woman specifically would solve her issues ... It's a very close friendship that developped into another stage overtime. She wasn't looking for it, it just happened.

I can imagine, after a complete life with a man, being a widow, that it might be easier to find companionship with another woman who gets it, instead of "starting again" with another man. But I have a hard time believing someone like my mother would be looking into this kind of change for the right reasons. Like others have said, man/woman, woman/woman, in the end it is just looking for somebody else to solve their inner void for them.

[Couscous]

My concern or thoughts that I'm processing is that this feels like one more identity she is trying on or a "thing" she is diving in to without any thought. I worry about the risk of her hurting someone...and she made the point that anyone on these apps is at risk of having their feelings hurt or getting heartbroken. She's not wrong, but maybe you know what I'm trying to say.  

Bottom line is that I want to appear open and supportive of her in the case that this is legit and may bring her happiness she has not explored before.

It sounds like you are talking about your teenaged daughter as opposed to your mother. This is actually private matter that she is going to have muddle through on her own and there isn't actually a legitimate role here for you to play.

I know it's not an easy thing to do, but those of us who had to parent our parents do have to let go of that role and be willing to let our parents lead their own lives as they see fit. Yes, in childhood we may have needed to play that role, but now as adults, it would be in our best interests to relinquish it entirely, because it saps our energy and distracts us from being able to lead our own lives to the full. It is an anxiety provoking proposition to let go of this role to be sure, because our inner child still believes it's 1987 and that if we aren't there keeping mom on the straight and narrow then terrible things will happen. So perhaps it's time to have a dialogue with that part of you and tell her that she's now safe with you (your adult self) and that she doesn't need to worry about mom anymore, because you are taking of her.  

[cle216]

I just wanted to finally respond and let you all know that I came here not knowing what I needed, but you found a way to meet my needs in your replies. This was all so helpful and I just needed a lot of time to process it and reflect on my role. @couscous your explanation of parenting my mother has really been a complete life changing perspective...it had me reflecting on so many interactions, gives me something that I can control in these scenarios (me), and puts me at much greater ease for not checking in and asking questions in moments when I previously would have which would only have invited more drama into my life. It's really changed my lens on my responses and interactions. Thank you all so much!

[Couscous]

I just wanted to finally respond and let you all know that I came here not knowing what I needed, but you found a way to meet my needs in your replies. This was all so helpful and I just needed a lot of time to process it and reflect on my role. @couscous your explanation of parenting my mother has really been a complete life changing perspective...it had me reflecting on so many interactions, gives me something that I can control in these scenarios (me), and puts me at much greater ease for not checking in and asking questions in moments when I previously would have which would only have invited more drama into my life. It's really changed my lens on my responses and interactions. Thank you all so much!

That’s great to hear! Keep up the good the work!