Sexuality

[Kelli Cornett]

Was your BD's all over the place? I'd have to say my ex's were addicted to porn and matserbation impersonal sex (violent, no eye contact) and than periods of from withdrawing sex. Than being amazing in bed.(in a healthy seeming way) Than I believe that both had gay tendencies. Also one liked hookers


I know there is no "normal" sexuality really but I found it to be all over the place. Anyone have shared experience?

[Kelli Cornett]

Btw Nothing wrong with being gay! I don't know if it sounded that way or something just didn't want to offend anyone!

[Itstopsnow]

I think mine was bisexual for sure! He wouldn't take oral sex from a female. I'm thinking he was molested and possibly associated oral sex with men only. He was very vanilla in bed but liked sex in the mirror with me and his other ex apparently. I think that is due because of his self esteem and not feeling there . Moments of dissociation. He had a lot of sex with us. I think he used viagra. Sex was kind of boring. He was cheating on me all the time and he was still kind of vanilla with me and the one other girl apparently. I think he had major childhood sex traumas .

[Creativum]

People with BPD do often struggle with sexual identity, and this is largely because they don't know who they are to begin with.  Couple this with the commonly occurring sexual impulsiveness and you've got a recipe for sexual confusion. 

My mother and both of my exes have had tremendous difficulty with it.  My mother was married 17 years until she drove my father to alcoholism and he finally divorced her.  The abandonment sent her to similarly disordered women, after she had failed at dating other men.  Both of my exes were with women before they met me.

In the case of my two exes, both had major self-esteem issues and body image issues.  They didn't think they were "man enough" and so they decided that if they were able to attract a certain type of man, then they, too, were like those men.  It absolutely destroyed my self-esteem to hear my ex talk about how my body wasn't good enough and how he desired other people all the time.  He also always tried to cheat on me, and he was successful one time, that I know of.  Oh yeah, and they were both sex and porn addicts.

The short answer:  Sexual identity is a huge issue in a great many BPD sufferers, and this is well-documented.

[GreenEyedMonster]

My ex was definitely straight but struggled with dominance/submission issues.  I think this was tied to his fear of engulfment, which was much stronger than his fear of abandonment.

As long as I was nervous and apprehensive about things, he would say things like, "Violate me any way you want."  If I seemed more confident, he would begin telling me stories about how his previous girlfriend was very dominant and wanted to keep him as a "sex slave."  He tended to be very passive in bed and said that he enjoyed this.  However, one time he met a girl on an online dating site who his friends told him was a dominatrix, and he was terrified of her.  It was the exact same kind of push-pull that takes place in the rest of our relationship.  If I act dominant or demanding, he becomes terrified of me.  If I act passive and scared, he begs me to dominate him.

His best friend came out to him as bisexual.  He is alternately terrified of his friend coming on to him and defensive of him.

[movingon123]

Indeed, sexuality seemed to be a constant source of both happiness and fear.

My ex is divorced, and had a volatile relationship just before me. We slept together, and they told me it was a mistake and couldn't happen again. Of course it happened again. Then they would get mad, say that "they were picking up on what I wanted, and losing themselves" in my desires.

We engaged in a lot of fantasies and desires that they kept secret, or at least not widely experienced, and when I was in a dominant role everything was peachy. But then when I became vulnerable and no longer so self-assure, the devaluing happened. And boy did that hurt.

[GreenEyedMonster]

Reflecting a little more on this, my ex almost acted comfortable with the fear, as if the fear of the woman "felt right" to him and was the logical terminal point in the relationship.  I think the fear and dominance recreated some of the emotions he felt toward his mother.  Is it weird to say that he enjoys being afraid of me, even now as I "stalk" him?  And now that I am very deliberately ignoring him, he feels a sense of emptiness from not being consumed by anyone?

[thisworld]

I found an old thread. Experiences of female members are familiar to me.

https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=151665.0