BEHAVIORS: Sexual identity issues?

[BPDFamily.com]

I have read that people with BPD often question their sexual identity.  

My (ex)bf has questioned it aloud to me. He had shared that he has been with his share or men in the past.  

An old friend of his told me (without my asking him), "he is GAY! what do you mean, you're dating him?" they used to be roommates and his friend told me he say men going in and out of his room.  When I asked my bf, he said that they were not casual encounters, that he cared about the men and had relationships with them. He said he had a period of time where he experimented and said he felt so accepted and comfortable with them.

[wdone]

I have read that people with BPD often question their sexual identity.  

My (ex)bf has questioned it aloud to me. He had shared that he has been with his share or men in the past.  

An old friend of his told me (without my asking him), "he is GAY! what do you mean, you're dating him?" they used to be roommates and his friend told me he say men going in and out of his room.  When I asked my bf, he said that they were not casual encounters, that he cared about the men and had relationships with them. He said he had a period of time where he experimented and said he felt so accepted and comfortable with them.

[GENERAL ANNOUNCEMENT]

GENERAL ANNOUNCEMENT This board is intended for general questions about BPD and other personality disorders, trait definitions, and related therapies and diagnostics. Topics should be formatted as a question. Please do not host topics related to the specific pwBPD in your life - those discussions should be hosted on an appropraite [L1] - [L4] board. You will find indepth information provided by our senior members in our workshop board discussions (click here).

[Torn-in-two]

I think there is a large percentage of BPD's that question their sexuality.

Indeed a while into a our 9 year relationship she told me she had slept with someone days before meeting me, to check she still wanted to be with men. Even then I was kind of blind, and assumed that her alternative would to be alone. It wasnt till 6 years into our relationship that I found out she was bi-sexual, and it wasnt because she told me. Admittedly she has to this day, never slept with or had a relationship with another woman, and has to my knowledge only ever kissed a friend when she was in hospitable, but that it doesnt change the fact that she does find other women attractive both physically and emotionally, and it nearly drove us apart when I found out.

Even now because of the way I found out, Im still jealous and paranoid about what she might be doing, but maybe also Im looking for an excuse to leave... .  :'(

.

[Rebecca_2010]

There are great articles here about sexuality and the BPD that could better awnser that question.  In reading the threads, it seems a pattern.  Your situation sounds like it's more of an insecurity thing.  Is there a way you 2 can go to some counseling together to get an un involved 3rd party professional?  It might help him state some things he is thinking and feeling that possibly are being vented in a way that isn't being understood?  I know if it were me and I was committed to some one who constantly accused me of something I wasn't doing, would get old real quick.  

[ifsogirl26]

https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=52832.0

This is from the questions board about bisexuality and BPD. I don't know if it will help but its all I found on the subject.

[Chazz]

Lesbians and gays don't hate the opposite sex -- they sexually desire same sex partners.

(I wish the myth that gays/lesbians "hate" the opposite sex would stop being repeated, here, and everywhere. It's a fallacy that justifies homophobia in some people's minds.)

NOTE:  To the extent that any gay man "hates" women, it's an issue of misogyny NOT sexual orientation. In the case of lesbians, the term would be misandry.  

There is no link between sexual orientation and borderline personality disorder. There is a link between identity confusion/diffusion, fetishism, BDSM, sex addiction/acting-out and BPD.

If there was a link between sexual orientation and BPD, then it would be tempting to say that there is a link between heterosexuality and BPD since the overwhelming majority of BPDs are heterosexual. Wouldn't making an assertion like that raise a few hackles?

Linking sexual orientation to BPD is not just a false assumption, it's an error in logic that hurts people in tangible ways. (I just read where a political party in Montana wants to make homosexuality illegal. Maybe, it's their way of ridding the State of borderlines. For sure, this lesbian (me) won't be vacationing in Montana anytime soon.)

[Disgruntled]

I do not think there is a link to sexual orientation and BPD.  I believe that most homosexual's initially try to be heterosexuals... .and then eventually 'come out'.  It may be even more difficult for homosexual BPD's to except their homosexuality and make this transition because the have identity and acceptance issues anyway... .so they may bounce back and forth.  I believe that which ever sex triggers the pwBPD's emotions... .is the sex they are attracted to the most.

[wdone]

I do not think there is a link to sexual orientation and BPD.  I believe that most homosexual's initially try to be heterosexuals... .and then eventually 'come out'.  It may be even more difficult for homosexual BPD's to except their homosexuality and make this transition because the have identity and acceptance issues anyway... .so they may bounce back and forth.  I believe that which ever sex triggers the pwBPD's emotions... .is the sex they are attracted to the most.

wow. this makes sense. so helpful... .this is kinda what i was thinking may be going on!  however, i agree that my bf is  triggered by our intimacy to a huge extent.  i think ,though, maybe (from what he has said), it is much less intimacy with a male partner, so much safer for him and less triggering and one reason i could see him choosing that path, aside from the fact that he may be gay... .thank you

[Grace58]

Yes, she changed orientations frequently, as she mirrored different people.  She had a big nasty streak of internalized homophobia (or did she?  Maybe she was just saying that to cause dissention) and never wanted me to cut my hair short  because I made her look like a lesbian. 

Reflect on that statement, she was my lawful wife, in the most liberal state in the US, and somehow I made her look like a lesbian and this was a terrible thing?  Ridiculous.  When I got my hair cut in anticipation of losing it to chemotherapy she sulked for a week.  My friends and I joked that her bumpersticker was "Your cancer makes me look fat".

I wanted to get her a T-shirt that said "I'm not a lesbian but my wife is".  All of this silliness aside, I don't honestly think she has an orientation of any kind.  New hosts are found in a variety of containers and each kind of container can be exploited to serve your needs. Sex was performance for her or a means to end. 

To have an orientation suggests that you have a tendency to be more intimate with one gender or another.  Most of us LGBT types have had sex with the other sex at one time or another, but we have an orientation to *intimacy* with same-sex (in the lesbian case); generally orientation is not really about physical sex, it is about who you fall in love with.  BPDs can't do real intimacy, sex is a performance, and therefore I believe many of them are not especially rooted to one orientation or another.  You know "whatever works" or "I love who I love" blah blah blah.

I won't miss her revolting homophobia though, whether it was being provocative or not.  She shocked most of my straight friends speechless when she would get on a tear about lesbians.

[gettingoverit]

My ex swung both ways as well. Was a teenage mother, had two kids with two different guys. Then went to women for a time. I don't think it really matters what the sex is of the people they get involved with, as long as that person can meet their needs (in my case it was financial). My ex went to my ex friend because their was a better chance of getting all of her wants ($$$) met. And it worked... .six weeks after we split she had that $5500 diamond ring on her finger, and is planning her lovely wedding that she has wanted all of her life, and of course my exfriend has a great little house that they can sell so that she can get a bigger one. My ex is so predictabe. It's so sad.

[spiralthorns]

Thanks for replies! I agree with what has been said so far. I'm in the early 20s age range, and a lot of people my age are really into the fluid/whatever/no labels thing. What happens is, people will go out and kiss or even have sex with someone of the same sex and suddenly because they received pleasurable physical sensations from doing that, they think they must be something beyond heterosexual (or homosexual if they're experimenting with the opposite sex). My girlfriend told me she had no real orientation because all sex was just sex but there was no intimacy attached to anything. In the asexual community, I know there's a concept where you can be a romantic asexual or an aromantic sexual. It almost seems like the latter was what she was. She had a sex drive, but her capacity to feel romantic love seemed almost nonexistent. Her relationship before me supposedly didn't work out because her girlfriend was actually straight and just fooling around with bisexuality. Despite this, my ex seemed to be the confused one most of the time.

[Kick Drum]

Wow.  Last I fell in love with a guy who has BPD.  He's pan sexual.  I'm gay.  Well, to make a long story short, just about everything I've read here sounds like something out of my experience.  Fortunately, I only fell in love.  But as he got stranger and stranger, my love settled into like and then like from a safe distance.  Fortunately I never slept with him.  And now view the experience as one of the sad but most educational.  I know, that's a strange combination of ideas.  Nevertheless, in the end, I thank the lord, or whoever, my love never ended up in sack! As I can see from my fellow members here, that would be been a real heart breaker.  Now, I feel sorry for my BPD friend.  But a little optimistic as I did convince him to seek help.  Which he did.  But looking at this a year plus later, I wonder if he's ever going to get any better.  As with most of the BPD people mentioned in this thread, my BPD friend continues to drink his face off and pick up whatever man or woman he can.  I'm just glad I'm not a part of any of this and can observe from a distance. 

[GENERAL ANNOUNCEMENT]

GENERAL ANNOUNCEMENT This board is intended for general questions about BPD and other personality disorders, trait definitions, and related therapies and diagnostics. Topics should be formatted as a question. Please do not host topics related to the specific pwBPD in your life - those discussions should be hosted on an appropraite [L1] - [L4] board. You will find indepth information provided by our senior members in our workshop board discussions (click here).

[qwaszx]

my friends confused as to her sexuality also, i think its part of BPD, when you dont know who you are, and question everything about yourself i assume that includes there sexual identity. for her i know she uses sex a void filler, has said it means nothing to her. she has also told me shes bisexual, but has never slept with another woman. she has told me countless times that she was in love with her female best friend in high school(never told her). When I first met her she made a comment in regards to checking me out, (I have other friends who aren’t straight, so I never paid much attention). any male relationship shes had that i've seen always end badly, or is just bad, more for self-harm, or rebelling, then emotional connection if you were to ask me. when i asked her one time if she were to have a 3sum who would it be with, she said both female(me and her high school crush)... . it’s all confusing if you ask me. you know i dont believe i seen her with a man that she even remotely likes  yet she dreams about the prince who will one day save her from this hell... .

[wdone]

wow, i can't believe this post is being commented on years later! glad it helps?

i now, 3 years later, am 99% sure my bf is not gay.  i believe he was "acting out" due to his abuse early in his life. 

he has not been with anyone (man or woman) since he met me, and i think at least 6 months before we met. 

i am so grateful this has not been an issue and that i feel it was in the past, and that i have gotten clarity around it. 

sorry for you who still struggle with not knowing, or dealing with your SO acting out today!   

[maxsterling]

I've read about this, and am curious how common it is for a pwBPD to have had periods in their life when they thought they were gay, or switched back and forth over the course of their life.  My GF went through a period where she was a lesbian, tafterwards she says she was basically bisexual just sleeping with all her friends.  That was during the time when she was also actively addicted to drugs, but she also says that she has been with women since then, but not "dating" only sex.  And now she says she is definitely "straight".  It also seems quite apparent that she has a different definition of a "relationship" than I do.  My feeling is if you have sex with a person, you have a "relationship" of some kind, no matter how short lived.  But to her, having sex with someone multiple times over a period of a few months doesn't constitute a "boyfriend". This leads me to think that a pwBPD may have a different way of attaching emotions to sex than a non does.

What has been your experience with your BPD partner?  I'm having a hard time understanding this, or being completely comfortable with this.  I think the uncomfortableness comes from me wondering if sex means the same thing to her as it does to me.

[lemon flower]

my muBPDx apparently had some homosexual encounters in his past.

he seems to go from periods of total abstination to periods in which he goes totally lost switching from girls to boys and having sex with anyone who wants to.

usually he prefers girls, and he has a very strange attitude towards homosexuality: he says he doesn't believe it exists  

to him homosexuality is purely a choice you make, understandable from his point of view,

also what is interesting to know: he has an identical twin brother who is homosexual !

again, he doesn't believe his brother is "really" homo, he thinks his brother choose to be gay to avoid trouble with women  

i don't know if his twinbrother has BPD because I never met him, but according to what I hear from my ex I wouldn't be surprised if he were, I consider that his twinbrother is more introvert, and probably highfunctioning

his older brother for sure has the illness too, i truly believe in their case it really runs in the family.

returning to the original question: one of the reasons of their "gay"-side that my ex mentioned himself is that apparently the older brother has abused the twins sexually when they were children... . (when the older one was 14 and the little ones 9 years old)

[goateeki]

This is what I'm dealing with, and my real concern (well, maybe not concern anymore... .it's becoming academic) is this: we're married, have two young kids, and it is crystal clear to me that she is not heterosexual. Not heterosexual, maybe not any other orientation, but not heterosexual.  Some statements that have been made to me in the last five months (at the start of which I was ejected from the bed, and remain ejected): (1) "I might never be able to be affectionate," (2) "I'm so nervous that we might get to a point where we get along and love each other like brother and sister but we'll never be in love," (3) "I married you because you were there and you weren't scary," (4) "I felt worse and worse about sex because I never wanted it," (4) When the topic of her serial, all consuming relationships with women (her "project" relationships) is brought up by me, and I comment that we could have a great marriage if she put half as much energy into it as she puts into her all consuming relationships with women, she replied "Maybe I just never felt anything for you," (5) "Sex was [note past tense] the least favorite thing in our relationship (read: marriage), I hated it, and I never wanted it," (6) Asked if she trusts men, she replied "No." Asked to elaborate with "Are you saying that you're not attracted to men," I received silence. Asked the same question a second time after I called her out of what appeared to me to be a dissociative state, she replied "I don't know." We briefly moved to different subjects. SHE then returned to the orientation subject and said "So what if I am that way?" (7) "I should never have got married, I didn't know what I was doing [note that we will be married 19 years next month], (8) "I feel trapped."

So I ask you, does it not seem quite clear that she is not hetero?  I have been thinking about suggesting that she come out to herself, at least.  Perhaps our next marital session would be s good forum for that (her orientation) because I have no trust at all in her.  Her statements get more bananas all the time, and she never wants to talk about the substance of marital problems in marriage counseling.  Our MC does not know how to deal with a person like her. 

I deserve better.  I don't know why I waste any more time or money on this problem.  I am paying for her to go through the motions of fake therapy, in which I see again and again her dishonesty in therapy. I feel like a sucker.

[ropend]

I think there is a large percentage of BPD's that question their sexuality.

Indeed a while into a our 9 year relationship she told me she had slept with someone days before meeting me, to check she still wanted to be with men. Even then I was kind of blind, and assumed that her alternative would to be alone. It wasnt till 6 years into our relationship that I found out she was bi-sexual, and it wasnt because she told me. Admittedly she has to this day, never slept with or had a relationship with another woman, and has to my knowledge only ever kissed a friend when she was in hospitable, but that it doesnt change the fact that she does find other women attractive both physically and emotionally, and it nearly drove us apart when I found out.

Even now because of the way I found out, Im still jealous and paranoid about what she might be doing, but maybe also Im looking for an excuse to leave... .  :'(

.

"question their sexuality"

You are so much more charitable than me.

[blueeyes567]

These questions have come up for my wife and I the last several days. She had gf's in highschool and before me. She also had bf's and was married to a man. She explains that she relates to women better and feels more comfortable around them. She is sexually attracted to women but she always seeks men when she is down. She wants men to hit on her, she chatted sexually with men a couple years ago but stopped after I caught her and just a few days ago cheated physically with a man. She explains that it is not enjoyable but there is excitement leading up to the act. Before me, she would go on sexual binges with guys. Sometimes several times with the same stranger from the internet or several different strangers before finally coming back to reality. She said she would feel so dirty, used and disgusted after what she did. This has been a pattern for her since she was a teenager but when she is in the "normal" state of mind, she wouldn't look twice at a good looking man but does double takes on good looking women.

[maxen]

my friends confused as to her sexuality also, i think its part of BPD, when you dont know who you are, and question everything about yourself i assume that includes there sexual identity.

i think that's at the core of it. i'm not saying that sexuality is purely a subset of BPD, but, in my case, my w was looking to be taken care of to an extent that i couldn't give. she was also gay-curious, but she herself, and the evidence of the bedroom, contradicted that she was gay. and the one who came along and opened the door is pretty aggressive and looks like she'll be able to give direction in a way that i wasn't willing to.

[spemat]

I don't have BPD but I have always been bisexual and my files always had the note: sexual insecurity.  I find it to be more of an issue in the other two communities more than mine.  Experimentation with one gender is seen as normal but the other it is seen as gay and since I never came out at all, I have no clue as to the roots of that dynamic.  I had issues being taken seriously or seen as dateable but bisexuals are building their own community for that reason.  Straight people think we are pervs or closet cases and gay people think we are traitors.  Straight men tend to be more apt to feel safer confiding in bi men and many experiment too but there is behavior bisexual (curious etc) and orientation bisexual and I don't pose a threat.  Straight men know that some gay men have big mouths and tell everyone they experimented and often call them gay and I don't care about that.  I have bipolar I disorder and mania and hypersexuality tends to made me feel like the stereotype of the worst of my orientation but that is our self image issue.

My mom had BPD and she came out as gay after years of catholic hell and she never accepted me from the calls home in first grade until a year before she died.  I only date bisexuals too by the way.  I don't agree with the inter orientation relationships.

[ShadowIntheNight]

We should ask my uBPDexgf. For 10 years she was married to a man and had two kids late in the marriage. She expressed to him her desire to be with a woman. They were divorced and 6 months later she and i began a 9.5 year lesbian relationship. I was everything he wasn't and more. I hung the moon. Until I didn't, beginning this last February. 4 years ago she declared she wanted to get married and have another baby. To a man. And even tho she left, she didn't go for good.

This time, she wrote me a letter and told me she had been dating men during the summer and that she did not intend to go back "to that kind of relationship." It's been 6 months since we've actually talked to one another. It was this time exactly one year ago her mother confronted her about our relationship. None of her friends and  family knew she was gay. All of mine did. I expect that all of this has to do with her mother. My exgf, by the way, is 46, Hispanic, catholic and a therapist. My guess is that she is sick to her stomach that she's back with a man again. I told her 4 years ago I was done if she did this again. Her first crush? Her female high school gym teacher. Yeah, she's straight. For sure.

[GENERAL ANNOUNCEMENT]

GENERAL ANNOUNCEMENT This board is intended for general questions about BPD and other personality disorders, trait definitions, and related therapies and diagnostics. Topics should be formatted as a question. Please do not host topics related to the specific pwBPD in your life - those discussions should be hosted on an appropraite [L1] - [L4] board. You will find indepth information provided by our senior members in our workshop board discussions (click here).