Hello Elessar and
I don't know if she has BPD or not, but I will relate the behavior you describe of your loved one to BPD, as I understand it, and perhaps this will help you make your determination.
... . She knew I liked her, but would reject me and push me away every evening. Yet next day would come back to talk to me. The reason for the pushing away was because of our different faiths. Her family is strict Muslim and she cannot be with a non-Muslim man.
Maybe her push/pull behavior is related to the conflict of her personal desires with her religious and cultural background. But for people with BPD (pwBPD), they push/pull because of their internal dynamic of fear of engulfment/abandonment. For pwBPD, when they need you (ie., when they idealize you) they will pull you close to them. But for pwBPD, feelings of intimacy trigger their fear of abandonment (sometimes this is described as fear of engulfment); and as I understand it, as they feel closer to you, they then fear that you will abandon them (even if it is only imagined - also leading to devaluation), and the best way to avoid abandonment is to abandon first, thus they push you away. They leave you first in order to prevent you from leaving them. Because when they abandon you, they have avoided being abandoned. Fear of abandonment is not the fear of being alone, it is the fear of being left (first).
... . 3 more months later she confessed that she had been sexually abused as a child for 3 years by five of her uncles. She said the secret for 10 years had been killing her and she was near suicidal.
Perhaps she was abused as a child. But you must also consider the possibility that she has imagined these events just as she had fabricated some of the negative things she has said of you. When she idealized you, she devalued someone else that was important to her. When she devalues you, she idealizes someone else.
Over the next few months we had the most intense and romantic relationship. Even though she is from a culture where virginity is held dearer than life, we had physical relations after she gave hints that she wanted to. A week after graduation, she called me and broke up because half her family found out about me and they are blackmailing her that if she doesnt break up, they will tell her father after which God knows what will happen.
I don't pretend to be familiar with the muslim religion or culture, but I find it difficult to believe that her family would have a bigger issue with a family outsider consorting with their daughter over a familial sexual abuse/incest. I am incline to suspect that the situation is actually far more complicated.
A few months later she contacted me to tell me never to contact her and that she was disgusted by our relationship. A month later she wanted to meet her at her dental school for closure. And then she disappeared for 4 years till late 2010. Till then, it seemed as if this is a normal story of heartbreak due to parents.
So during this time, I suspect that someone else was idealized, while she continued to devalue you.
About 2.5 years back she contacted me as someone else (as a coworker of her)... . would flirt a little, tell me that I should contact my ex, that my ex misses me. I refused and then she contacted me as herself and wanted to meet me. She said she wanted one last meeting before her parents find a husband for her.
This bit of behavior should give you some insight into her willingness to take initiative when she wants to (i.e., when she needs something from you). She was willing to manipulate you by pretending to be someone else to get you to do something you didn't want to do. Also, this was the only time you mentioned that her family was trying to arrange a marriage for her: was this a completely made up lie?
When we did meet, she did not seem like the strong-willed, confident girl I had known before. She cried on my shoulder, kissed me, but left.
Another aspect of BPD you should consider is that for pwBPD, their identities, their personality is not so fixed as it is in non-disordered people. She will be whomever she needs to be, in order to get what she needs from you. So she will be a strong-willed, confident girl in order to seduce if that is what works in one instance. But she can also then be helpless and a "waif" in another instance, if that is what it takes.
Two months later late one night... . the intense BPD relationship began. She was having problems with her parents and I believe she had split them black. So she came to me for comfort. She wanted to meet me at her hospital where residents stayed overnight... . and on our first meeting she had a panic attack and asked me to spend the night with her. We had sex and for the next month she would ask for the same, whether it was a weekend or weekday. We also had pretty romantic dates and moments together.
Why was she in the hospital? What problems was she having with her parents? Here is my guess: while she was committed in the hospital she was dealing with her disordered fear that her *parents* might abandon her; perhaps she was afraid that they would commit her to a mental health facility, perhaps she was afraid they are trying to marry her off so she would be someone else's problem. Whatever it may be. She turn to you to *avoid* that abandonment. Because if she no longer depended on her parents, then they could not "abandon" her. So she devalued her parents, and idealized you. She ran to you to avoid being abandon by her family.
But since she is still living at home, it had to be in secret or in her hospital sleeping room. After a month later I started noticing the craziness. Her expectations were so unrealistic that my female coworkers said she has either never been in a relationship or watches too many movies. She had also started to blow up in rage over things I didn't understand. On any instance I could her hero or her villain. She was pretty suicidal and that scared the crap out of me. I will have to leave stuff and go take care of her. She would get panic attacks and separation anxiety when I had to go out of town for graduate school interviews. I never realized the fear of abandonment at that point.
It is only at this point did you feel the full weight of her disorder, because it was only at this point was she fully committed to you, perhaps in the same way that she had been "committed" to her family previously. I have no doubt that the experience you had with her in this instance, is more or less what her family has to deal with daily. Only what might have been confusing to them is that while she was "with" you she was no longer behaving is such an obviously disordered way *to them*. But *to you* you only now started to see the full breadth of her disorder.
When she told her mother about her use, her mother's reaction was to ask "are you a virgin" and her sister's reaction was "you are selfish for wanting to expose your uncles". The emotional and verbal abuse she has received and continues to receive at home is out of the chart. That is what which drives her crazy, yet she defends them like hell if I say a word about her family.
Certainly the behavior of her family does not improve upon her mental health. But I think it is difficult for you to discern her dysfunctional behavior as she uses her family's dysfunctional behavior as a smoke screen. I have no doubt the situation is more complicated.
She told me we have to get married the next day and she should come with me to the new city I was moving to for graduate school in 5 days. For the previous 7 months she had said she won't act in haste and won't do anything like this. When I reminded her that, she broke up again saying I abandoned her (I thought she had already broken up a few days earlier). Till today she holds on to the fact that I left her.
Her behavior changed because her needs changed. She *needed* you to marry her immediately because now that she was committed to you, she had much more of her disordered fear of abandonment to contend with. She believed that if you married her, then that would "prove" you had no intention to abandon her. She is unable or unwilling to consider that her fear of abandonment is disordered in nature.
She will always hold on to the notion that "everyone" abandons her because that is the nature of her disorder (i.e. disordered fear of abandonment)
Of course logic and reason never worked.
You cannot cure mental illness with logic and reason.
Over the couple of months she said we aren't together because my mother isn't treating her as a daughter-in-law (made no logical sense), or I abandoned her, or I never proposed to her (I had been asking her to marry me since college).
You see, this is her disorder telling her that you abandon her. So *feels* it in her bones. And the feelings are so strong that her perception of reality will gave way to her feelings. She will try to *rationalize* her disordered feelings.
The reason we weren't together was always my fault, never herself or her father.
Of course they are always everyone else's fault, and they will continue to be in her mind until she becomes willing and able to consider that she has a problem.
She told me I was just like her uncles who would take her to a room and rape her. I knew her past would make her feel it that way, but just like the abandonment accusation, she has never taken that accusation back. Her excuse has always been "thats how I felt then".
She told you that you were "just like her uncles" which would make me wonder just what I could believe was true about what she said of her uncles.
She would ignore for a few months, then would get drunk and ask me to save her. She cannot be with another man and cannot let another man touch her. I told her I will bring a ring and then the final choice is yours. I went home 4 days later and she blew up on me because I didn't have a ring (I never thought she would expect one in 4 days... . I was going to propose in a month once I had arranged the money to buy one). She said she is so angry she wants to slap me. I said if it will make you feel better, do it. And she actually slapped me twice in public... . but that still didn't calm her. She said I could have asked her to marry me without a ring (which I have like a million times!). Then she came up with new excuses as to why we are not together... . I never showed her a ring. If I had ever showed her one, she would have left home and accepted me. I never showed her commitment. I couldn't believe she took my idea of the ring and turn it around to blame me!
Here's the thing: there is nothing you can do that will change how she feels because how she feels is more of a function of her disorder than it is of any of your behavior. In essence, she is asking you to behave in a way that would cure her of her disorder. But you cannot. Only she can do anything for herself in order to recover from her disorder.
A few weeks later I made a website, recorded a video, and proposed to her via website. I was going home in 4 days to do it in person. Once I did it online, she had no excuse to blame me anymore. Then she started changing her story as to how she doesn't know if she has an answer and maybe I should't propose to her. But I did, she didn't answer.
Her feelings determine her perception of reality, not reality. Her stories will always "change" in order to fit her feelings, especially her disordered feelings.
She herself saw that she matched all 9 criteria of BPD! She started going to a therapist... . who got overwhelmed by her story. And in the first or second meeting that day lady said "you seem fine, there is nothing wrong with you". I felt I was crazy.
Here is another "thing" many of the disordered feelings that pwBPD deal with only manifest in one context: the context of intimacy and family. When she is talking to her therapist, who is to her a complete stranger, she experiences none of her disordered feelings -- so as far as the therapist can see, nothing is wrong with her.
Couple of weeks into therapy I went with her, and the first question I was asked was "tell me about your gambling problem". I had no idea what was going on.
Moreover, her memory of her previous disordered feelings/behaviors will be altered in a way her disordered mind can accept. And what she is willing/able to accept is that everyone else (i.e., you) has a problem. I suspect that she had *projected* all of her disordered feelings/behavior onto you. So in essence, her time with this therapist was spent dumping on you.
... .
