Does my ex qualify for BPD? .. and stupid me for still supporting her (2 years)

[Before you can make things better, you have to stop making them worse...]

Dear all,

I am very pleased with this website and forum, and hopefully you can give me some immediate advice. I apologize for the long text, but it gives the complete picture

2 years ago, I met this fantastic (good to be true?) woman in my life. She was in a desperate state already due to her job (she an indirect colleague) and I was kind of her savior.  I was too blind to see the red flags due to the extreme quick development of our relationship. She moved in with me after 2 months and promised me the world and we would get old together. I noticed she also displayed weird behaviour. The smallest things would make her angry (e.g. parked the car in another spot that she wanted, used the wrong cleaning cloth etc) and after 1 hour she said sorry again. During this period she was jobless and stayed all day at home and keep on texting me how great I was. I met her family (I was the first ever, as she said it), I supported her in finding a new job and all was great and she met my family too. When her new job started, everything changed instantly (1 month). No more sex, kissing, she suddenly were evenings back late and was very flaky in her answers and whereabouts.

At those moments I can advice everyone to follow your guts, something was not right and I saw strange text messages on our shared iPad that she was going to leave my apartment. I did not know anything and confronted her and she said that its all her and she just left and broke up. 4 weeks ago she was a completely different person.

Nothing made sense and I suspected she found someone new on work, but had no proof. I listed all her symptoms (see below) during our 7 months relationship and 1 month after the break-up I somehow ended up with BPD in google:
- Idealize me immediately (I was the best)
- Reckless driving
- Black/white thinking (all collaegues she initialally liked, is now on her "hate" list)
- Out of the blue angry on small things, apologize hour later
- Reckless spending (very expensive luxury stuff)
- Cannot work with other people at work (all their fault, they are all wrong)
- Suicidal comments
- Depression (including meds)
- Low self esteem
- She can stay whole weekends locked at her home, feeling of not "living" the moment
- Paranoid (all documents need to be shredded)

Does she qualify for BPD symptoms?

All reasons for No Contact (NC). I was stupid enough to still be in contact with her for 2 years and support and help her with almost everything. Yes, this means I am a caretaker type of guy and I doubt sometimes if something is wrong with me. Why would you still support / love such a girl after the sudden break-up with no clear answers why? She was acting nice to me and still touching me, being nice etc. but no kissing / sex.

Anyway, this weekend I had to restore deleted data of her external hard drive and saw pictures of her with another man (kissing) two weeks after our break-up. Indeed it was a collague as I suspected. I should have not checked the preview of the pictures, but I did and actually gave me satisfaction (see, my guts were right!)

In summary, I am now fully convinced going full "No Contact" and will ignore her if she sends desperate (suicidal) messages to me to get attention or support. She did that in the past sometimes to get my attention. Any additional tips or insight would be very much appreciated.

PS: I am not sure how to tell her (and maybe I should not) that I found those pictures. I assume she would not care anyway and in her mind she is always right.

Thanks for your listening ear,

M.

[Mountain81]

Dear all,

I am very pleased with this website and forum, and hopefully you can give me some immediate advice. I apologize for the long text, but it gives the complete picture

2 years ago, I met this fantastic (good to be true?) woman in my life. She was in a desperate state already due to her job (she an indirect colleague) and I was kind of her savior.  I was too blind to see the red flags due to the extreme quick development of our relationship. She moved in with me after 2 months and promised me the world and we would get old together. I noticed she also displayed weird behaviour. The smallest things would make her angry (e.g. parked the car in another spot that she wanted, used the wrong cleaning cloth etc) and after 1 hour she said sorry again. During this period she was jobless and stayed all day at home and keep on texting me how great I was. I met her family (I was the first ever, as she said it), I supported her in finding a new job and all was great and she met my family too. When her new job started, everything changed instantly (1 month). No more sex, kissing, she suddenly were evenings back late and was very flaky in her answers and whereabouts.

At those moments I can advice everyone to follow your guts, something was not right and I saw strange text messages on our shared iPad that she was going to leave my apartment. I did not know anything and confronted her and she said that its all her and she just left and broke up. 4 weeks ago she was a completely different person.

Nothing made sense and I suspected she found someone new on work, but had no proof. I listed all her symptoms (see below) during our 7 months relationship and 1 month after the break-up I somehow ended up with BPD in google:
- Idealize me immediately (I was the best)
- Reckless driving
- Black/white thinking (all collaegues she initialally liked, is now on her "hate" list)
- Out of the blue angry on small things, apologize hour later
- Reckless spending (very expensive luxury stuff)
- Cannot work with other people at work (all their fault, they are all wrong)
- Suicidal comments
- Depression (including meds)
- Low self esteem
- She can stay whole weekends locked at her home, feeling of not "living" the moment
- Paranoid (all documents need to be shredded)

Does she qualify for BPD symptoms?

All reasons for No Contact (NC). I was stupid enough to still be in contact with her for 2 years and support and help her with almost everything. Yes, this means I am a caretaker type of guy and I doubt sometimes if something is wrong with me. Why would you still support / love such a girl after the sudden break-up with no clear answers why? She was acting nice to me and still touching me, being nice etc. but no kissing / sex.

Anyway, this weekend I had to restore deleted data of her external hard drive and saw pictures of her with another man (kissing) two weeks after our break-up. Indeed it was a collague as I suspected. I should have not checked the preview of the pictures, but I did and actually gave me satisfaction (see, my guts were right!)

In summary, I am now fully convinced going full "No Contact" and will ignore her if she sends desperate (suicidal) messages to me to get attention or support. She did that in the past sometimes to get my attention. Any additional tips or insight would be very much appreciated.

PS: I am not sure how to tell her (and maybe I should not) that I found those pictures. I assume she would not care anyway and in her mind she is always right.

Thanks for your listening ear,

M.

[fromheeltoheal]

Hi Mountain81-

And welcome to

Yes, the idealization, the impulsive behavior, the black/white thinking, the suicidal comments, all potentially traits of the disorder, although it's a continuum and most people exhibit some of the traits some of the time.  I'm sorry you're going through that, it can be painful and confusing, although not unique around here, we understand.

You mention mostly things about her; how are you doing emotionally right now?

[pgri8684]

Welcome on board; I'm sure you"ll find help and a lot of answers here. What you wrote is a very common story. I experienced almost the same with my replacement after one month and his moving in after two months.
The only differences were that my EX expressed violence against herself (self-harm) and few anger towards me.

IMHO your EX has BPD traits and it might be too difficult to share any kind of intimacy with her.
During the first 6 months after the break up I tried to maintain a certain form of friendship; I feel now that it was "mission: impossible"; because it is only one-sided: her needs, her life, her problems are the only concerns.
So I choose No Contact, which is hard, but my life must change: she has a new knight, a new soulmate (her words).

Please ask yourself: do I really need to help her, is it still my job? Would my life be better without her?
Try first to be happy alone (or with your family and old friends) and after some months you"ll be strong enough to find a new safer, stronger but quieter R/S

pgri

[Mountain81]

Wow, thanks for the quick replies already!

How I feel? The first 6 months I was devastated. I was even imagining what I did wrong when we were together, which is actually strange.

Now I feel way more mature, and we had our silent moments. Here I initiated no contact as i wanted to be romantically involved only with her and not just as friends (even know I suspected she has BPD). During those short terms of no contact I actually felt great, but than you get the text message out of the blue that she feels depressed and don't see the reason of living. Here I responded on and than we were again in day-to-day contact for months (mostly chat, but also lot of weekends hanging around together).

The last month she acted more flaky and distant again, so I suspect some other guy again. Anyway, good opportunity to say goodbye forever.

I think the best way forward is start dating again with a fresh and powerfull mind again (my previous dates were not so successful)