Relationship indefinitely over now after a turbulent year and a half

[Beware of Junk Psychology...]

Hey,

I have been struggling in my relationship for a long time already, but I never considered or thought about the possibility that my now ex-girlfriend may have BPD, until my therapist brought it up when I talked through events and showed her some conversation between us.

It was a fabulous beginning. She took initiative and invited me over to her country, paying for me. We had the first time sex rather fast and she captivated me. I felt like I never had a relationship with a woman like her before. So strong, independent, caring, successful, and kind. We had the same interests, and were very much on the same line when it came to what we enjoyed doing, how we liked our house interior, what we didn't like, what hobbies we did etc. I felt that she was my first partner that I really wanted to grow old with.

She had(still has) a very high sex drive, it was intense, and she was very sweet for me. She would let me sleep in in bed, and then gently wake me up after going to the stores, to hand me a sausage and bacon roll she got me. She would often buy things for me, gifts and things I liked, and kept insisting for me to stop looking at the cost of things and just get what I liked. I would go toilet and come back to my computer and have a game gift popup on my screen from her. As far as the things she told me about her past go, she always did such things for her friends and partners. When we left the store and there was a homeless person, she would ask what he wanted to eat and head back into the store to buy it for him.

There were no signs of BPD to me. Eventually I started feeling that she wasn't very good with money, and she would get angry at me if I tried to pick something cheap to save HER money, she would take me to restaurants and the bill would be expensive, she would tip etc. Whenever she needed something or wanted it, she bought it. She had a good income and could afford to do this, and it never raised a concern with me, cause it was her money, she worked for it, and I had no business with how she spent it. She would spend hundreds at once on new kickstarter games regularly.

Not long after I visited her the first time, she wanted me to stay and move in with her. I did and we had a great time. She had an upcoming trip overseas for work, and really wanted me to be there. She never wanted to tell me how much money she paid extra for me to come along, but it was well over 1500. She said I shouldn't worry about it and it was her choice.

A few months later she lost her job. She collapsed. She fell into a depression, that would last until the end of our relationship more than a year later. Thats when times started to get hard. She would get angry outbursts a lot, and I did not know how to deal with her depression well. I looked for an escape and fleed, and I was not always next to her to comfort her when she was crying - which was at that point happening every day. I didn't know how to fix things or make her feel better, but we survived this. She managed to interview and land a job in my home country. We relocated together, it was a very involving and exhausting move. It took almost 3 months of living with my parents to find a house for us to rent. There were many arguments and situations where it went completely out of control at that time. She started to truly hate and despise my parents and family, and the depression was getting worse.

We then moved into our new house, made lots of ikea trips and what not and started furnishing it. She would be paying for the furniture as I was still at my final year in university and had no income. She had given me a bank card for her account. I was doing the shopping and making food most of the time, and trying to preserve her money where I could. This led to arguments about me buying crap she didn't like, and not getting enough of things she wanted. It was mainly crisps. She was a big comfort eater and throughout the whole depression had been comfort eating and gaining a lot of weight. Now this did not bother me and I never said anything about it, but it started to bother her. She referred to herself as a whale often, and felt insecure. I did what I could to reassure her. but what I'm getting to is she would get mad and it would cause an argument if I didn't return from the store with enough bags of crisps.

Only a bit over a month after moving in together in the new house things became worse between us. We had very little communication, she was interpreting everything she could as an attack on herself and going defensive, and I was often baffled at how she was reading hidden messages between the lines of what I said and deriving a completely different message in her head. She blamed my lack of familiarity with the English language and its nuances for this often. I spent increasingly more time behind my computer to distract myself as the anger on her part became worse. I could never do anything good in her eyes anymore. She would tell me I don't care about her at all, and she was constantly suffering. It wasn't just the depression, there were constant physical ailments for the past half year. She had more days that she was ill than days she wasn't. She constantly had very severe back pain, headaches, even migraines, chest pain, coughing... .She would cough until she had to vomit. At times it appeared to me as if she was deliberately trying to cough as hard as possible.

Another thing she was now doing all of the time was having certain expectations of me, not verbalising them in any way at all, and then getting really mad at me for not doing/knowing them and accusing me of not giving a ___ about her. I felt worthless and as if I couldn't do anything that was appreciated. When she yelled at me for not caring, and I explained to her the things I did for her just on that day, she would dismiss them with something like 'boohoo, you had to adult. What do you want from me, a ___ing thank you note every time you do something? Grow up'.

Things got bad and communication was almost non-existant anymore. I felt a constant passive aggression towards me every day, and I knew that every time I tried to communicate with her, it would not be well received and misinterpreted in a negative way. It came to a point where we broke up, and she kicked me out. I moved back to my parents. I spent a lot of time thinking, and I felt really bad that she was still going through depression and it was only getting worse, and I wasn't there for her. I blamed myself for everything that went wrong and kept searching for explanations to justify the things she did and said, telling myself that she couldn't help it and it was the circumstances, and finding guilt in myself. I wrote her a number of very heartfelt, emotionally open and apologising letters in that period. I made a video as well. I talked about everything that happened, admitted my part of mistakes and blame in everything I could blame myself in, was very honest and I made her a list of things I wanted to change and do to be better for her.

She obviously ignored all of them without a response. Then,  at one point I got a message 'I just got fired. Now you and your parents can have a good laugh'. I was mindboggled how she could think we would get any pleasure out of that. It was a very bad weather day, and everyone was encouraged to stay inside, but I did not have to think for a second and jumped in the car to drive over to her. She was very emotional and crying a lot. I comforted her and sat with her. She told me she did read all of the letters I wrote and planned to reach out to me at some point, but needed more time to process things and think about it. But she wanted me to be there, and I stayed with her again for the period that followed.

This period was the one where I was the most devoted I had ever been to making sure I put my own feelings aside and always supported her in everything she needed. I made an honest list of promises, things I would try but couldn't promise, and things I wanted to introduce again, also including a section of things that would still be difficult for me. I kept to all of my promises. There was no more gaming at all. My life consisted of just doing study projects, and being there for her. It was a stressfull time, because as my workload was every increasing and deadlines were coming up, I found myself unable to focus most of the time.
She was at that point 24/7 on the couch. I mean that literally, she did not sleep in the bed anymore because of ailments, and sleeping in the bed would make her illness and coughing worse. She did not leave the sofa to grab a drink, only to go toilet as that was something I couldn't do for her. Everything else, I did. Shopping, household chores, making every meal in the day, bringing her drinks on the sofa. this situation was not looking like it would change anytime soon, but I was determined to be there for her and do whatever she needed me to do. I spent time with her sitting on the sofa as much as possible.

You would think there would not possibly be anything to fight about in that situation. Wrong. Now there would be arguments and anger towards me because I made the spaghetti too spicy, because I let her sleep in on the sofa and didn't wake her up to hand her food, because I took a drink and didn't bring her one, because I worked my ass off to catch up on pressing deadlines and dinner came too late for her, and so on.

She broke up with me again. She said I didn't care for her enough and I would never be the caring person she needed. That we were incompatible. I went back to my parents house. A couple of days afterwards, she decided to relocate out of the country and go live with her own parents in her home country. This was a smack in my face as everything we went through would now be for nothing and she would permanently leave the country. I cried a lot at that time and it was a very difficult time for me. I didn't want to give up on her. Found out she was eating really badly as she was still rarely coming off the sofa, let alone go shopping. She was also still ill. So I went by to bring her takeout meals, to bring her groceries after going shopping so she could eat properly. But she was emotionally completely closed off. She got really angry if I attempted to bring something up that was emotionally related, she only wanted to hear about practical topics. She said she couldn't feel anything at all anymore, about nothing. That she was in survival mode.

A week before her move I was over and somehow I got managed not to make her angry when I was emotional about her moving away. We had sex that evening, showered together, and I slept over that evening. The day after she explained to me that it was  really my parents and family she resented so much, and a weight fell off her shoulders knowing she'd never have to see them or deal with them anymore. She spent hours explaining to me all the bad qualities of my family, and how my bad traits are a product of my environment and how I was raised. She said our relationship was doomed to fail when we moved to this country, and there was nothing either of us could have done to save it. I spent the final week sleeping over with her, and we packed and boxed up stuff all day every day. Her attitude towards me seemed to have changed. For the first time in a very long time she was able to notice moments when I was struggling/felt upset and came to ask me what was up. This was magical for me, because for almost as long as I could remember now it was always about her, and we never ever talked about my feelings anymore, or there was not even the feeling that they mattered to her. It felt like old times.

She had told me we could never be in a relationship anymore as long as I was with my horrible parents and I needed to get out of there asap for my own sake and health. I started believing her. After she moved country, we never had a talk about being together again, but we were assumed implicitly back together. We made plans for me to visit and spend a week in a hotel together, and she was increasingly trying to convince me into leaving my country and finding a job over there and relocating, and never having anything to do with my own family again. I say trying to convince, but eventually she was forcing my hand. She cancelled that hotel trip and broke up with me again because after two days I still had not decided to quit my studies and move over and get a job. 'How could you have to think about that decision even', she said. 'It should be so easy, being stuck in that horrible household or having a future with me where we can live together again'. I kept telling her I had not decided to stay like she assumed, but she wouldn't hear it. I did end up visiting, that was decided after I had reached out to her friend just two days before my flight.

The hotel itself was not great, and this of course fed her negativity. For a very long time already, she was by default negative about everything. It was weighing on me, especially because she tended to also dismiss my suggestions or ideas, or immediately come up with reasons why they were stupid or impossible. But we spent the time together and we had a lot of sex, washed each other in the shower, she had brought me a picnic basked of goodies(snacks and drinks). We went out for meals and overall I was happy to spend time with her. During the hotel trip I had also started looking for jobs over there as I had decided I wanted to build a future with her, and would be willing to relocate and try to finish my studies remotely.

Back at my parents, I was interviewing. Between us it was back to the longdistance thing for the time being. She never showed me any pictures of herself anymore, she felt too insecure and uncomfortable. The only things she ever sent me were the dog and food pics. Now I just had to deal with this, but we would also almost never have the opportunity to call and talk to each other, as she only wanted to talk if her parents were both not at the house. There were times when she was alone but didn't want to call because something I had said or done (or not done) had put her off and she would passive aggressively show her discontent by going off grid, but without being confrontational. She would then disappear completely and the next day or 10 hours later come up with excuses such as 'oh, I fell asleep.' or 'I felt unwell', 'I had a busy day and then me and my parents watched netflix till late'. It was obvious to me she was intentionally disappearing as I knew her normal patterns well enough, and when she wasn't like that she would messsage me every single morning and evening and throughout the day(mostly just showing food and what is happening in her house, so pictures of the dog and tv).

She was obsessively checking my logout times as well to see if I didn't stay up too late. At one point, I was staying up for a bit later than usual and it became 5 am. She told me off about it, lectured me over messaging. Kept going on about it, and I felt verbally attacked. I asked her eventually to leave me alone until she could talk to me with respect instead of saying hurtful things. She went even more aggressive. Said you have to earn respect, I should look up the word in the dictionary, and I haven't shown her anything to respect so far. It came to a point where I told her to ___ off.

That's where she snapped. Slinged some very personally attacking mean things to my head. Said I am dead to her, that she hopes I rot away. She wants nothing to do with me anymore, and I'm a selfish uncaring leeching piece of ___ who is just like my mother. Completely blocked me and moved on with her life. I attempted to reach out, but to no avail.

2 days later I got offered the job in her country... .


I want to add that she often said things like 'Why does bad luck keep following me everywhere?' and 'Why can nothing ever go right for me!'. Very much an external locus of control.

[Esharanja]

Hey,

I have been struggling in my relationship for a long time already, but I never considered or thought about the possibility that my now ex-girlfriend may have BPD, until my therapist brought it up when I talked through events and showed her some conversation between us.

It was a fabulous beginning. She took initiative and invited me over to her country, paying for me. We had the first time sex rather fast and she captivated me. I felt like I never had a relationship with a woman like her before. So strong, independent, caring, successful, and kind. We had the same interests, and were very much on the same line when it came to what we enjoyed doing, how we liked our house interior, what we didn't like, what hobbies we did etc. I felt that she was my first partner that I really wanted to grow old with.

She had(still has) a very high sex drive, it was intense, and she was very sweet for me. She would let me sleep in in bed, and then gently wake me up after going to the stores, to hand me a sausage and bacon roll she got me. She would often buy things for me, gifts and things I liked, and kept insisting for me to stop looking at the cost of things and just get what I liked. I would go toilet and come back to my computer and have a game gift popup on my screen from her. As far as the things she told me about her past go, she always did such things for her friends and partners. When we left the store and there was a homeless person, she would ask what he wanted to eat and head back into the store to buy it for him.

There were no signs of BPD to me. Eventually I started feeling that she wasn't very good with money, and she would get angry at me if I tried to pick something cheap to save HER money, she would take me to restaurants and the bill would be expensive, she would tip etc. Whenever she needed something or wanted it, she bought it. She had a good income and could afford to do this, and it never raised a concern with me, cause it was her money, she worked for it, and I had no business with how she spent it. She would spend hundreds at once on new kickstarter games regularly.

Not long after I visited her the first time, she wanted me to stay and move in with her. I did and we had a great time. She had an upcoming trip overseas for work, and really wanted me to be there. She never wanted to tell me how much money she paid extra for me to come along, but it was well over 1500. She said I shouldn't worry about it and it was her choice.

A few months later she lost her job. She collapsed. She fell into a depression, that would last until the end of our relationship more than a year later. Thats when times started to get hard. She would get angry outbursts a lot, and I did not know how to deal with her depression well. I looked for an escape and fleed, and I was not always next to her to comfort her when she was crying - which was at that point happening every day. I didn't know how to fix things or make her feel better, but we survived this. She managed to interview and land a job in my home country. We relocated together, it was a very involving and exhausting move. It took almost 3 months of living with my parents to find a house for us to rent. There were many arguments and situations where it went completely out of control at that time. She started to truly hate and despise my parents and family, and the depression was getting worse.

We then moved into our new house, made lots of ikea trips and what not and started furnishing it. She would be paying for the furniture as I was still at my final year in university and had no income. She had given me a bank card for her account. I was doing the shopping and making food most of the time, and trying to preserve her money where I could. This led to arguments about me buying crap she didn't like, and not getting enough of things she wanted. It was mainly crisps. She was a big comfort eater and throughout the whole depression had been comfort eating and gaining a lot of weight. Now this did not bother me and I never said anything about it, but it started to bother her. She referred to herself as a whale often, and felt insecure. I did what I could to reassure her. but what I'm getting to is she would get mad and it would cause an argument if I didn't return from the store with enough bags of crisps.

Only a bit over a month after moving in together in the new house things became worse between us. We had very little communication, she was interpreting everything she could as an attack on herself and going defensive, and I was often baffled at how she was reading hidden messages between the lines of what I said and deriving a completely different message in her head. She blamed my lack of familiarity with the English language and its nuances for this often. I spent increasingly more time behind my computer to distract myself as the anger on her part became worse. I could never do anything good in her eyes anymore. She would tell me I don't care about her at all, and she was constantly suffering. It wasn't just the depression, there were constant physical ailments for the past half year. She had more days that she was ill than days she wasn't. She constantly had very severe back pain, headaches, even migraines, chest pain, coughing... .She would cough until she had to vomit. At times it appeared to me as if she was deliberately trying to cough as hard as possible.

Another thing she was now doing all of the time was having certain expectations of me, not verbalising them in any way at all, and then getting really mad at me for not doing/knowing them and accusing me of not giving a ___ about her. I felt worthless and as if I couldn't do anything that was appreciated. When she yelled at me for not caring, and I explained to her the things I did for her just on that day, she would dismiss them with something like 'boohoo, you had to adult. What do you want from me, a ___ing thank you note every time you do something? Grow up'.

Things got bad and communication was almost non-existant anymore. I felt a constant passive aggression towards me every day, and I knew that every time I tried to communicate with her, it would not be well received and misinterpreted in a negative way. It came to a point where we broke up, and she kicked me out. I moved back to my parents. I spent a lot of time thinking, and I felt really bad that she was still going through depression and it was only getting worse, and I wasn't there for her. I blamed myself for everything that went wrong and kept searching for explanations to justify the things she did and said, telling myself that she couldn't help it and it was the circumstances, and finding guilt in myself. I wrote her a number of very heartfelt, emotionally open and apologising letters in that period. I made a video as well. I talked about everything that happened, admitted my part of mistakes and blame in everything I could blame myself in, was very honest and I made her a list of things I wanted to change and do to be better for her.

She obviously ignored all of them without a response. Then,  at one point I got a message 'I just got fired. Now you and your parents can have a good laugh'. I was mindboggled how she could think we would get any pleasure out of that. It was a very bad weather day, and everyone was encouraged to stay inside, but I did not have to think for a second and jumped in the car to drive over to her. She was very emotional and crying a lot. I comforted her and sat with her. She told me she did read all of the letters I wrote and planned to reach out to me at some point, but needed more time to process things and think about it. But she wanted me to be there, and I stayed with her again for the period that followed.

This period was the one where I was the most devoted I had ever been to making sure I put my own feelings aside and always supported her in everything she needed. I made an honest list of promises, things I would try but couldn't promise, and things I wanted to introduce again, also including a section of things that would still be difficult for me. I kept to all of my promises. There was no more gaming at all. My life consisted of just doing study projects, and being there for her. It was a stressfull time, because as my workload was every increasing and deadlines were coming up, I found myself unable to focus most of the time.
She was at that point 24/7 on the couch. I mean that literally, she did not sleep in the bed anymore because of ailments, and sleeping in the bed would make her illness and coughing worse. She did not leave the sofa to grab a drink, only to go toilet as that was something I couldn't do for her. Everything else, I did. Shopping, household chores, making every meal in the day, bringing her drinks on the sofa. this situation was not looking like it would change anytime soon, but I was determined to be there for her and do whatever she needed me to do. I spent time with her sitting on the sofa as much as possible.

You would think there would not possibly be anything to fight about in that situation. Wrong. Now there would be arguments and anger towards me because I made the spaghetti too spicy, because I let her sleep in on the sofa and didn't wake her up to hand her food, because I took a drink and didn't bring her one, because I worked my ass off to catch up on pressing deadlines and dinner came too late for her, and so on.

She broke up with me again. She said I didn't care for her enough and I would never be the caring person she needed. That we were incompatible. I went back to my parents house. A couple of days afterwards, she decided to relocate out of the country and go live with her own parents in her home country. This was a smack in my face as everything we went through would now be for nothing and she would permanently leave the country. I cried a lot at that time and it was a very difficult time for me. I didn't want to give up on her. Found out she was eating really badly as she was still rarely coming off the sofa, let alone go shopping. She was also still ill. So I went by to bring her takeout meals, to bring her groceries after going shopping so she could eat properly. But she was emotionally completely closed off. She got really angry if I attempted to bring something up that was emotionally related, she only wanted to hear about practical topics. She said she couldn't feel anything at all anymore, about nothing. That she was in survival mode.

A week before her move I was over and somehow I got managed not to make her angry when I was emotional about her moving away. We had sex that evening, showered together, and I slept over that evening. The day after she explained to me that it was  really my parents and family she resented so much, and a weight fell off her shoulders knowing she'd never have to see them or deal with them anymore. She spent hours explaining to me all the bad qualities of my family, and how my bad traits are a product of my environment and how I was raised. She said our relationship was doomed to fail when we moved to this country, and there was nothing either of us could have done to save it. I spent the final week sleeping over with her, and we packed and boxed up stuff all day every day. Her attitude towards me seemed to have changed. For the first time in a very long time she was able to notice moments when I was struggling/felt upset and came to ask me what was up. This was magical for me, because for almost as long as I could remember now it was always about her, and we never ever talked about my feelings anymore, or there was not even the feeling that they mattered to her. It felt like old times.

She had told me we could never be in a relationship anymore as long as I was with my horrible parents and I needed to get out of there asap for my own sake and health. I started believing her. After she moved country, we never had a talk about being together again, but we were assumed implicitly back together. We made plans for me to visit and spend a week in a hotel together, and she was increasingly trying to convince me into leaving my country and finding a job over there and relocating, and never having anything to do with my own family again. I say trying to convince, but eventually she was forcing my hand. She cancelled that hotel trip and broke up with me again because after two days I still had not decided to quit my studies and move over and get a job. 'How could you have to think about that decision even', she said. 'It should be so easy, being stuck in that horrible household or having a future with me where we can live together again'. I kept telling her I had not decided to stay like she assumed, but she wouldn't hear it. I did end up visiting, that was decided after I had reached out to her friend just two days before my flight.

The hotel itself was not great, and this of course fed her negativity. For a very long time already, she was by default negative about everything. It was weighing on me, especially because she tended to also dismiss my suggestions or ideas, or immediately come up with reasons why they were stupid or impossible. But we spent the time together and we had a lot of sex, washed each other in the shower, she had brought me a picnic basked of goodies(snacks and drinks). We went out for meals and overall I was happy to spend time with her. During the hotel trip I had also started looking for jobs over there as I had decided I wanted to build a future with her, and would be willing to relocate and try to finish my studies remotely.

Back at my parents, I was interviewing. Between us it was back to the longdistance thing for the time being. She never showed me any pictures of herself anymore, she felt too insecure and uncomfortable. The only things she ever sent me were the dog and food pics. Now I just had to deal with this, but we would also almost never have the opportunity to call and talk to each other, as she only wanted to talk if her parents were both not at the house. There were times when she was alone but didn't want to call because something I had said or done (or not done) had put her off and she would passive aggressively show her discontent by going off grid, but without being confrontational. She would then disappear completely and the next day or 10 hours later come up with excuses such as 'oh, I fell asleep.' or 'I felt unwell', 'I had a busy day and then me and my parents watched netflix till late'. It was obvious to me she was intentionally disappearing as I knew her normal patterns well enough, and when she wasn't like that she would messsage me every single morning and evening and throughout the day(mostly just showing food and what is happening in her house, so pictures of the dog and tv).

She was obsessively checking my logout times as well to see if I didn't stay up too late. At one point, I was staying up for a bit later than usual and it became 5 am. She told me off about it, lectured me over messaging. Kept going on about it, and I felt verbally attacked. I asked her eventually to leave me alone until she could talk to me with respect instead of saying hurtful things. She went even more aggressive. Said you have to earn respect, I should look up the word in the dictionary, and I haven't shown her anything to respect so far. It came to a point where I told her to ___ off.

That's where she snapped. Slinged some very personally attacking mean things to my head. Said I am dead to her, that she hopes I rot away. She wants nothing to do with me anymore, and I'm a selfish uncaring leeching piece of ___ who is just like my mother. Completely blocked me and moved on with her life. I attempted to reach out, but to no avail.

2 days later I got offered the job in her country... .


I want to add that she often said things like 'Why does bad luck keep following me everywhere?' and 'Why can nothing ever go right for me!'. Very much an external locus of control.

[Esharanja]

I ran out of space in my original post. I am now facing the decision to accept the job and move over on my own to a new country, or decline it and remain with my parents, with whom my relationship has deteriorated a lot following all the events in the relationship, and she managed to get me to blame them and see all the evil she saw in them, for being the reason why things went bad. For all the bad things they do that she pointed me to.

I talked about the money thing. I wouldn't describe it as an addiction to spending money, just being very liberal with it. For example, at one point she told me we cannot afford to buy any more furniture to furnish the rest for the coming months, because she had spent too much already and her money was running low. Two days later she would spend over 200 on simple dog beds that were nice but really not important or needed, especially such expensive ones. When she kicked me out, she instantly spent a grant ordering a new bed and mattress to replace mine in the guest room.
When I was trying to save money by picking a cheap restaurant, and skipping on desert, she would then give a tip of 1/3rd of the total bill.
When I made a list of the furniture and household items we still needed, she would get really mad at me because there was no money to do so, and me just making the list reminded her of that fact so she didn't want me doing it. I went to explain that I was making it because I know what to look for then in the second hand store cheap sales, or on community pages where things are given away.

I know that all things considered, she did spend a lot of money on me, supporting me while studying. She always assured me it was her choice and she wanted to do so. I told her that when I was financially able, I would do the same for her.

Now after we broke up, I did reach out several times to try and talk things out, told her about the job offer, and made it very clear that I wanted to keep my promise and support her, and she would finally have a place to sleep that is not the couch of her parents, I would cover the rent and she wouldn't have to pay anything.
To no avail, she completely discarded me. I have received a few messages where she was intentionally trying to hurt me, and very clear messages that she wants nothing to do with me anymore.

I was extremely confused how she could be making plans with me to live together again, convince me to move over and get a job, and then discard me over something so ridiculous. I also felt strongly that for the past half year or so, she completely had lost the ability to self-reflect, to empathise with me and imagine how her hurtful words come across. Where in the first half year she would sit on the sofa crying and apologising that she was such hard work, and that she didn't mean to be angry or be like that but just couldn't help it, for the past half year she has not apologised once for the things she said or did. And it had become pretty standard for her to personally attack me, make me feel worthless and insult me when we had an argument(which was often).

It made me lose all self confidence and I now feel emotionally completely drained.

I still don't know if she could have BPD or not, but when I read stories about it I recognised many things, albeit not all. I wonder how she could be so great and nice for the first months, and it was only after quite some time that she started behaving this way towards me. Maybe it was just her depression? She kept telling me about the extra difficulty of being a high-functioning depressive, and I looked up a lot of resources about that and dealing with a partner with it. I searched therapy. Talked to people. Joined support groups. But it was not until very recent that I was handed the possibility that she has BPD.
I know she has had multiple partners and relationships of 1-2 years before me, and I think every single boyfriend she had lived with her. There was none that she was actually positive about, when I asked about her exes and why they broke up it seemed to always be them and they were treating her badly or just bad for her. She had also said she lost some friends because of betrayal.

[Esharanja]

Somehow my edit buttons have disappeared, although I am still logged in.

She has OCD (but not in a serious way), but I always saw it as a strength as it makes her a very organised person. She would have to walk on a specific side of me and sleep at the correct side of the bed. It didn't manifest itself in more serious ways.
Distorting facts... well it often felt like I said one thing and she took something else out of it, but immediately internalised it that way in her head. I would notice this for example when she would be calling with her parents in an angry mood and telling them about the bad stuff I had done or said, and I would be thinking 'that is totally not what I said or intended!'. At one point she sat in the couch telling her parents over the phone 'it really sucks when you are not supported at all by your partner. Yeah, he is here. No, he doesn't care about me' while I was sitting right behind her, willing to do whatever she needed me to, and not otherwise occupied.

Another thing I noticed is that when something happened she would internalise a specific train of thought or specific words to describe it, and when I heard her tell the story or event several times to friends and parents, she would use the exact same words and emphasis.

What confuses me so much and makes me question if this is BPD at all, is that she has worked for some companies for several years, and she was very successful. She built good relationships with colleagues and in general is very good at making first impressions or making people like her or want to talk to her. She has incredibly positive professional reviews from colleagues. People that knew her for several years.

[Mutt]

Hi Esharanja,


I’d like to welcome you to the family. I’m sorry about your circumstances and how you arrived here. You quickly moved in with your girlfriend in another country, she freely spent money on you, lost her job then you moved in with your parents fighting ensued she found another job and she got fired again all while you’re a starving student going to school and doing schoolwork remotely.

You didn’t share the communication between your ex that you showed to your T and your T suggested BPD you’re second guessing yourself if she is or not. I’m going to guess that your T saw a lot of emotional immaturity and disproportionate anger in your communications with her. We can’t diagnose because we’re not professionals what we can look at are BPD traits. I just to ask you a couple of questions are you struggling not so much with the fact it’s possible that she has BPD are you struggling because it’s hard to believe that she’s mentally ill? Are you also struggling with guilt about not being able to help her with her depression and the money that spent on you?