Hi, I am glad I found this forum and in the following post I am going to share my story. I hope you will help me understand what happened
One month ago my relationship with pwuBPD ended. She (29F) ended it. but let’s start at the beginning. Just so you know it was my first real relationship in my adult life.
Some background:
I (31M) got to know her at work around January 2022. She was a junior programmer and I was an aspiring senior who was teaching her and a few other ppl.
We spend one year having casual contact at work and nothing really happened. I know she was in a relationship with her fiancee so I didn’t think anything about.
She always wanted to move to Switzerland and her fiancé got a job there so they moved around the end of 2022. But before her moving we organized a farewell meeting at the bar for her with other colleagues from work. After a few beers there was a lot of chemistry between us, like really a lot.
She was in therapy for a few months and her therapist told her that she was in a relationship with a narcissist. She accused him of being controlling and manipulative. She officially ended this relationship around February 2023 and moved back to her parents’ for time being. She also stopped therapy.
Then we started texting like crazy on facebook, sharing things about our life. I told her I went fully sober, went to therapy, that my life is getting good and stable. I really wanted to show her I was in a good place with myself, because that was the truth. She reciprocated with telling me what she liked, admired and dreamed of. She was very bubbly then. But very soon it went dark, but I was totally oblivious. It was my first relationship that I thought was going somewhere. One day she said after having a glass of wine that she is a bad person, that she doesn’t want to hurt me. She was afraid that if our relationship advanced further we would be become ‘enablers’ to each other. She even mentioned that she usually needs a rebound after failed relationship and that she didn’t want me to be her rebound. There was even a guy that she was already texting with around the time she was finishing her relationship with her fiancé. She kind of idealized him saying “He has the same soul but in a man’s body. Pity he is an open relationship. I need to be man’s number one”. I ignored it because I had a hunch she wanted to be my number one.
She shared that she had bad relationship with her 1 year older brother and relationship with her mother was lacking and that her father was not really there when she was a kid because of work. There were mentions of history of self harm and depression. I really liked her and I didn’t want to discard her because of her troubled history.
After this, for around a month, things started to become more sexual. Messages about how much she wanted me became more frequent. We could spend hours on the phone talking dirty to each other and masturbating. I was thrilled and didn’t have any self reflection other than “wow it’s
PLEASE READing amazing”. At the end of April 2023 she travelled 500km to see me over the weekend. It was kind of a secret, she didn’t shared with anyone where she was going to stay. She came to my house for the first time. We talked for 3 hours and the of course we had sex. As you may expect it was amazing. We spend the whole weekend
PLEASE READing each others’ brains out.
Whole May and June of 2024 we were seeing each other over the weekends. Between weekends she traveled back to her parents’. She was planning to move back into my city and find a job so she had to visit to take care of getting a new flat and doing some administrative work. But of course main reason was to see each other. We spend the weekend having sex every way imaginable and talking about everything. One weekend we took a trip to the coast and stayed in a hotel that we used as our
PLEASE READ-base and did some sightseeing. We decided to get official. She always mentioned that she had high sex drive and that she can’t imagine not being in a monogamous relationship. It was fine by me.
Then she moved into her new flat in my city and rented a flat 20-30 minutes away from mine. She even jokingly asked if it was ok that she would be so close to me now. I brushed it off saying that it doesn’t mean we will be spending every breathing hour together. I was aware I had quite a few avoidant traits. That’s why there as this magnetic force between us. She was so anxiously trying to attach to me. I was an independent person with my life organized pretty well at that time. I felt that after 2 months of us being together I wasn’t ready to have our lives merged so heavily like she obviously wanted.
At this point we had a relationship but it was still in early stages even though the beginning was really intense. With her being so close to me I stated, more than once, that I wanted it to last and we should keep it steady. She agreed to almost everything I said but to a point.
We were seeing each other around 4 times a week (I counted all the dates) and usually I stayed the night. But there were times I wanted to sleep in my own bad for whatever reason. When I told her that she became extremely sad. I saw her big sad eyes and her sad posture when she was walking me to the door. I felt guilty for sticking to my needs then. She feared abandonment a lot and avoided conflict like crazy. Our conversations about boundaries didn’t have any conclusions. When I asked her about her boundaries in a relationship I was blow away. She told me that there were 3 things she won’t tolerate: infidelity, physical violence and emotional violence. I thought to myself “and that’s it?!” I shared it with my friends and they were feeling the same way as I did. I had a lot more friends than she did. It’s best to say she only had to pillars in her life: her new job and me. It felt like too much responsibility for her wellbeing was in my hands. I started to feel uncomfortable with this kind of power. Her new job was really stressful for her. She had impostor syndrome and spent a lot of time preparing for the next day of work. She messaged me a few times that she was having panic attacks during or after her work hours. Messages like “I am standing on the balcony on 6th floor thinking how hard the fall would be”. I was scared and wanted to help her so I did what I could to engage her with conversation saying that I cared for her.
Oh and one more thing. I always knew she was diagnosed with MS, but her disease was not progressing at all for 9 years and it was caught early. I was afraid at the beginning but after some months I totally accepted the fact and didn’t think about it as flaw. Of course I was asking myself if I could bear such responsibility in potential future but along the way I decided I could if she was the woman I would spend my life with.
Around August 2024 she managed to get hold of her old therapist for one session. After this session I was approached with statement “I to stop just seeing each other and to take our relationship to the next level”. I told her in plain words “It is my first real relationship and I am a little bit afraid but let’s try”. She was upset and mad. She told me “Sorry but I don’t care about your fears. Are you doing it or not?” It was the first time she was so determined. Of course I said yes. Next day she was quite happy she managed to state her needs. I was relieved we managed to get it resolved. I didn’t think about her behavior after this.
I need to remind you I was in therapy and 90% of my time there I spent to navigate our relationship. I had concerns about her overwhelming need to be with me. That I had some concerns that she is not well when I am not around. It was then when I looked in attachment theory and realized I was avoidant and she was anxiously attached.
Next 2 or 3 months we spend in great atmosphere and we even managed to have a 2 week trip to US. It was great. We did a lot of things together. I managed to convince her to go to therapy even though she told me „I feel like I am being sent to therapy. I kind of don’t like it”. But she went.
In this period push/pull dynamic was more and more obvious. I needed time alone to process stuff from my therapy and our relationship. She wanted to spend more time together. She had a few friends in the city which she met like once or twice a month. I was relieved that I am not the only source of acceptance for her. Nevertheless she was clingy and pushed me. We started to talk about our plans for future. I couldn’t give her any concrete answer if I saw myself as a father, to have kids and starting a family. I never had to think about this stuff and our relationship was only 6 months in. I thought that it was too early.
During those first 6 months she repeatedly asked me if I wanted her the way she was. I always answered „yes”. Those questions appeared especially after she shared something dark with me. In the meantime she was diagnosed with ADHD and that helped a lot with her self esteem in her workplace. I forgot to write that I have also been diagnosed with ADHD and treated successfully since January 2023.
December of 2024 was tough. Something happened and we had a conversation which was quite shocking for me. We were really intimate and she told me she wants me just the way I was and the SHE WAS SURE THAT I WANTED HER. It made me nervous. At once I realized I needed some space to process this. It may sound weird but this whole conversation made me fell really guilty that I couldn’t want her as strongly as she wanted me.
Next few months were hard because I realized that as time went the relationship was getting more and more serious. I wasn’t really coping with that. We were spending less time together as I preferred to be alone at my home to just chill. I was feeling guilty that I didn’t want to spend more time with her. I also knew that every time I told her about my needs and wanted to spend evening alone she felt abandoned and sad. Even though she told me it was ok. But my guilt was rising. At this point we spend around two or three days a week. When we did met she was very eager to have sex. Sex was still great but I felt something was off. Like she was compensating something with sex. I realized that it was happening for the beginning of the r/s.
Fast forwarding to June 2024. I started antidepressants for a few weeks. I started them because I couldn’t deal with the pressure of her asking me about the future. To be honest I started doubting she was stable enough to build our lives together.
