Why do we fall for those who have BPD?

[VIDEO: "What is parental alienation?"]

An easy answer is that many of us grew up in a household with a family member with BPD. Therefore, dating and falling in love with a person with BPD seems “familiar”.

But if we dig deeper, perhaps there are other reasons too...

I think about when I was 12. I liked to ride the horses that nobody else could stay on. It was an ego boost and then I didn’t have a well developed sense of self preservation.

Perhaps those types of feelings are triggered at the beginning of a relationship with a pwBPD when we hear things like, “No one has ever understood me like you do.”

And then there’s the ability for a pwBPD to seem innocent and childlike. Perhaps they love animals and are very sensitive and supportive of your feelings (then—maybe not into the future.)

Or perhaps you’re drawn in by stories of victimization and you want to be the one who rescues her/him.

What is your story?

[Cat Familiar]

An easy answer is that many of us grew up in a household with a family member with BPD. Therefore, dating and falling in love with a person with BPD seems “familiar”.

But if we dig deeper, perhaps there are other reasons too...

I think about when I was 12. I liked to ride the horses that nobody else could stay on. It was an ego boost and then I didn’t have a well developed sense of self preservation.

Perhaps those types of feelings are triggered at the beginning of a relationship with a pwBPD when we hear things like, “No one has ever understood me like you do.”

And then there’s the ability for a pwBPD to seem innocent and childlike. Perhaps they love animals and are very sensitive and supportive of your feelings (then—maybe not into the future.)

Or perhaps you’re drawn in by stories of victimization and you want to be the one who rescues her/him.

What is your story?

[secretgirl]

Very interesting topic cat! So you were attracted for the ego boost of being the only one to try and understand /fix your partner ?

I think for me it’s the mirroring... it’s the loneliness then the mirroring that sucks me in (instead of being like ... hey old on a second ... red flags going off when things move too fast or seem too good to be true)... and then what keeps me around is my parents and my r/s when I was a kid... my mom back and forth love and hate ... my dad ... never loved ... so not only do I have a mother who gave me inconsistent love , I had a father I kept trying to “prove “ myself to...

[Forgiveness]

This is fascinating. I never thought of myself as a care-taker or a doormat. I was with my wife for 17 years and we had no drama, no fights. If we disagreed we discussed things with diplomacy and respect. She was even-keeled and calm.

Then she died suddenly and I was devastated. When I met my BPD girlfriend a year and a half later, she had so much to offer. The attractiveness was:

1. She was genuinely empathetic and she let me express my grief. For all her faults, she was never bothered by my crying and sadness. She held space for it.
2. She loved me passionately and was very physically affectionate. In my grief I needed this like a drowning person needs a life preserver. It filled up my heart.
3. Her drama was horrible, but it took a lot of space. It seemed to overshadow my grief. It was easier to try to figure out her issues than think about my wife's sudden cancer diagnosis and death, which could never be fixed. Drama is addictive and attractive.
4. When she was not triggered, she was FUN! In my grief, I wanted excitement and LIFE. She seemed so ALIVE. She liked to do crazy spontaneous things, like take the day off work and drive to another town to see an art show. Or she would wake up and suddenly want to throw a party. This was a wonderful antidote to my grief. She was always the person laughing the loudest and would always get up and dance if I put on fun music.
5. She does somewhat resemble my family of origin-- they don't have personality disorders but they can be intense-- however if I had not been recently widowed I would not have stayed with my girlfriend more than a few weeks. I would have had the strength to walk away.

I was super vulnerable when I met her. I wonder if there is a pattern of widows being attracted to people who have BPD or NPD because of the extreme attention. I seem to be the only widow here, but maybe there are others.

[Baglady]

Hi Cat 

I remember when I was a kid, our art teacher gave us a whole bunch of pebbles and asked us to pick one for some kind of art project.  I instantly was drawn to the ugliest and saddest looking rock in the pile.  It was so misshapen and wonky that the art teacher asked me why on earth I selected it and I remember telling her that I felt really sad for it.  Jeepers, even as a young child, I had an overwhelming empathy for a mere pebble 

I work with profoundly disabled children now but I really have to watch myself carefully to avoid slipping into codependency on the job.  I think my exBPDh took advantage of my innately highly-empathetic personality.

I also came from a FOO in which I felt unseen and, while love was definitely there, hugs, validation and outward displays of affection were thin on the ground.  My exBPDh showered me with overwhelming levels of affection, attention and care during his initial love bombing phase.  It was absolutely intoxicating to someone who grew up like me in a very undemonstrative, tough, working class family - like water in a desert to the thirsty.

I was barely out of my teens then, clueless and I didn't stand a chance 

Warmly,
B

[Notwendy]

Co dependency and tolerating being treated poorly in exchange for crumbs of affection were the norm for me growing up. I didn't know any different. I took on these behaviors in order to be accepted in my family and to gain approval.

The push-pull felt familiar. If I was good enough, tried really hard, then maybe BPD mom would finally love me. If I could make mother happy, then daddy would love me. And vice versa if I didn't.

I was also BPD mom's emotional caretaker.

I had very low self esteem growing up, subjected to my mother's criticism.

I might as well have had a neon sign over me in the dating scene that said "doormat, people pleaser" on it.

One good thing was that I did know the big red flags to avoid- my mother's behaviors were very obvious, but not the more subtle ones. I really didn't know what "normal" was- although I knew what was going on with my mother wasn't normal. Thanks to knowing the big red flags, I didn't fall for guys with serious issues, but still fell into relationship dynamics that paralleled how I grew up.

[Ozzie101]

Baglady, your pebble story is very familiar to me! I was a HUGE stuffed animal lover as a kid. But when I was getting a new one, if given the choice, I'd choose the one whose nose was a little crooked or whose mouth thread was a little loose. I felt sorry for it and wanted to be sure it got a good home. I couldn't stand to see anyone or anything in pain -- mainly emotional pain. Anyone getting their feelings hurt or being embarrassed literally made my insides hurt. And I went so far as to apply those feelings to inanimate objects full of stuffing.

I come from a loving family but there was some dysfunction, I see now. There's a history of depression and my father's extended family, while close in some ways, is also VERY repressed and reserved emotionally. I always felt loved and wanted but I've learned that my uncle (who committed suicide last year) never felt that. He felt it was always very cold and unloving. Looking back, the girls were treated very differently than the boys (hugs and kisses vs. handshakes, etc.).

The biggie for me, though, I think, is the sister closest to my age. As a teen, she was anorexic and she was a monster to live with. My parents and I were her big targets -- raging, manipulation, downright cruel behavior. Looking back now, I see that it was emotionally and verbally abusive. And, having lived with my H and learned so much more about BPD, I strongly suspect that the anorexia wasn't her illness -- it was a symptom. I've learned that her old behaviors have resurfaced but instead of the eating disorder, she's started drinking.

Anyway, after years away from that behavior what did I do? Fell in love with a man who ended up acting just like my sister.

[Enabler]

She portrayed herself as a confident, courageous, fun loving young woman... and we went from 0 to 4th base in about 25 minutes... and stayed on 4th base for about 6 months 4x a day. She wanted me so much it felt like she wanted to climb inside me. It was off the charts mind blowing, I was on cloud nine and it was the single biggest ego shot I've had in the 18yrs before and 22yrs since. 

[zachira]

For many years, I struggled with being attracted to the wrong kind of people both for friendships and intimate relationships. I was attracted to people with BPD, NPD, and Aspergers who interact in similar ways like my family members who have BPD, NPD, and Aspergers, all disorders in which the person afflicted is challenged in being able to have healthy intimate relationships. I realize that for a long time I welcomed the superficial interactions with these type of people because they felt familiar and comfortable. Now I run when I see someone who is incapable of healthy reciprocal relationships. I now have friends with whom I have extremely reciprocal relationships which oftentimes involves the challenge of taking constructive feedback about how I can be a better friend and get along in healthy ways with others. I am still working on being attracted to a man that can have healthy intimate relationships. Genuine intimacy in a romantic relationship is still a bit scary, the scariest part is feeling rejected, as I have been totally rejected for who I am by my FOO.

[Cat Familiar]

Seems like many of us have a lot in common. I got together with my first husband when in a very vulnerable state and his wild hijinx kept me on my toes and not thinking about my own issues. I was never in love with him; it just seemed inevitable being together and I went along with the program (his program) until it became too unbearable.

Many years later, I started dating my second husband. We’d known each other for many years. I’d even been to his wedding. Sadly, unbeknownst to him, his wife had been carrying on an affair, instigated by his best friend. When his marriage blew up, he was co-opted into a relationship by his best friend’s former girlfriend, and he felt resigned, much like I had felt in my marriage. What was worse is that he was treated abusively by her, so we had much in common.

I knew all these folks, so it didn’t occur to me that he was giving me a skewed interpretation of the story. Still, it also didn’t dawn on me what part he had played in both of those relationships in order to have his wife cheat on him, then get involved with a woman who treated him unkindly.

I saw myself as someone who could love him and help him repair all that emotional damage, including having an abusive NPD father. I could relate to that too, as a daughter of a BPD mom.

It took a while to discover that he wasn’t just an innocent bystander.

To go back to the horse analogy, I have a friend who is a true horse whisperer. People send her their wild and crazy horses to work with and she figures them out and sends them back home as better citizens. Sometimes it’s the owner that is the problem, much like misbehaving kids who do well in foster families and then return to their family of origin and have the same issues.

Occasionally a horse that she works with has a neurological issue that cannot be overcome and she has to tell the client that the horse will never be safe for the grandchildren.

My first husband, who I suspect has a variety of personality disorders: BPD, NPD, APD, was never safe for me. Even many years later, I still get calls from creditors when he has skipped out on paying his bills. The chances of me ever running into him are slim since he fled the state and had a warrant for his arrest.

[Notwendy]

Cat, it looked like H #2 elicited your caretaker tendencies. You would be the one to love him back to being happy.

Like many of us here, I didn't learn much about relationships until I was dealing with issues in mine. It was then that I learned that every relationship involves some issues with both people, to some extent. I too would likely have been drawn to a situation like with your H- so wanting to love and nurture that broken heart.

Except who wanted the nurturing? How often have we nurtured someone else as a means of somehow gaining the nurturing we want? I can relate to that. Being raised to do for my mother- what I actually needed as a child- to be loved and nurtured was my "normal". If I only loved mother enough and made her happy- then maybe she would love me too ( and so would my father). Sometimes it worked.

So I did that in relationships too. If only I loved someone enough, maybe they would love me too. 

Not to blame our parents- they did the best they knew to do at the time, but it is interesting how much our early "love" experiences influence how we "match" emotionally- attract and are attracted to- our partners. I now believe this is something we should look into as a clue to what dysfunction we contribute to relationships. Not in a hopeless sense but as a way to improve on our own skills- which helps all relationships.

[formflier]

I think about when I was 12. I liked to ride the horses that nobody else could stay on. It was an ego boost and then I didn’t have a well developed sense of self preservation.

Perhaps those types of feelings are triggered at the beginning of a relationship with a pwBPD when we hear things like, “No one has ever understood me like you do.”
 

A lot of this rings true for me.  Think about my profession.  How many people like wrangling an airplane onto a pitching deck at sea...in a storm, at night.  

OK..."like" might not be the best word for me, but I certainly an proud of it and it was an ego boost.

I've often wondered about this question with my wife, since hardcore stuff didn't appear for a long time in our r/s.

I dated a lot, yet I was nervous around her...found her mysterious and I was completely smitten.

So, she was beauty queen (literally with nice dress and sash around her as "Ms (fill in county name)") but she didn't "act like a cheerleader or beauty queen".   (I had dated lots of those types and certainly enjoyed the "arm candy" aspect of being out with hot gals, but never really felt "connected")

I felt "connected" to my wife.  We could talk for hours or spend hours together being quiet.  Didn't matter.

She was first in her family to complete college (several others tried and failed).  We met in college and I enjoyed "being on her team" as she pushed towards graduation.  

She had big plans to "live differently" than her FOO (and she did for 15ish years and still does sometimes).

I liked providing and for many years she turned what I provided into magic (raising big family).

I can definitely see how my upbringing "primed" me to overlook and "forgive and forget".

Interesting thread.  Keep it up.

Best,

FF

[formflier]

So I did that in relationships too. If only I loved someone enough, maybe they would love me too. 

 

This too!

My current P sat me down one day and gave me the following example.

She asked me to imagine St Bernard puppies and asked what they would be doing.  I said well of course they would be in your face...licking you and loving on you.

She said and that's great..right.  I said of course.

Then she said "How long to people like to play with St Bernard puppies?" 

Well, it depends but most people get worn out pretty quickly. 

Then she "got me".  She says "FF...you are an acts of service guy and you love to love people, especially your wife.  But you can come across like a St Bernard puppy.  There are times for that but often you need to "dial it back" and just "cuddle" and be close, vice being all up in their face "loving on them".

From time to time I still "turn it on", but keeping this analogy fresh in my head has definitely helped me improve my r/s.

Best,

FF

[Cat Familiar]

Notwendy, you’re absolutely right. I’ve been nurturing others, trying to make up for a lack of nurturing in my own life. I have a memory of climbing a plum tree in the backyard when I was probably 5 or 6. That day my mother hugged me and called me her “little sugarplum”. It is one of just a few moments when I actually felt loved and nurtured as a child.

I think she really did love me, but for some reason didn’t express that very well.

So nowadays animals get the benefit of my nurturing and they do give back. 

I also nurture my friends, and I pay attention to those who reciprocate and no longer try to get water out of dry wells. My husband is doing a pretty good job of reciprocating these days.

[Cat Familiar]

FF, I also felt nervous around my husband when we first got together. He was the “total package”—great looking guy, Ivy League, law degree, very smart, sophisticated, elegant, refined. The funny thing was that we didn’t talk easily. There’s folks that I talk with where the conversation just flows, and flows. We didn’t have that. But there was a very strong attraction.

Nowadays we talk much more easily, but not like how I can talk with friends.

[Notwendy]

We can talk more easily too but not like I can talk with friends. My H interprets things differently when I say them. I used to try to be more careful but also react when he did. But now, I don't react as much. I really think working on my own part in this situation has helped- especially my tendency to react and take things personally when they aren't.

[Ozzie101]

But now, I don't react as much. I really think working on my own part in this situation has helped- especially my tendency to react and take things personally when they aren't.

Same here. I don't deal well with conflict -- at all. It makes me want to curl up in a ball and hide. I've started paying more attention to my own reactions and really listening to what H is saying when he gets in a rage. Last year, a lot of those rages were aimed at me or were twisted around to somehow be about me. He's stopped doing that, but I have to really remind myself sometimes that "No, he's not raging at you. He's mad about the new school uniform policy (or really stressed about work and choosing this to focus on)." Then I can stay sort of detached, keep calm and let it run its course. I still get a kind of flashback/PTSD-type reaction sometimes, though, after the way he was last year. Just takes more conscious effort on my part to stay at baseline.

[Cat Familiar]

Like you, Notwendy and Ozzie, I've learned not to react to things he will pick out when I'm talking. It's peculiar how he can immediately take offense at some little insignificant thing that I might say. It's like he's scanning my words for a potential insult.

In the past, I used to try to explain my way out of it. Now I just move on. That works a lot better.

I'm not someone who trods on other's insecurities with muddy galoshes. I try to be very attuned and sensitive to not saying anything to offend anyone unless I'm in a situation where I need to confront them. And even then, I try to be very careful because I want my message to be heard rather than rejected.

I have a very long fuse and it takes a lot for me to get angry. I don't like how it feels, but if and when I do get angry, I'm fully capable of meeting fire with fire. But that almost never occurs, because I'd much rather keep things calm and rational.

So it used to be extremely galling when he'd accuse me of "attacking" him when I was merely giving an account of my day or describing something I'd experienced.

Nowadays it makes me think about how much internal turmoil and insecurity he must be experiencing if he filters information as potential insults.

[AskingWhy]

Cat, what a great post to start discussion.   

I think most, if not all, of us on this forum have some FOO issues that caused us to choose BPD partners. 

My own FOO set me up for a series of NPD and BPD partners.  My M was most likely BPD with NPD features. Her F was an alcoholic who beat his wife and children.  M had the whole family on edge when she was in a foul mood.  She'd openly rage at my F for the smallest infractions or perceived slights.  F was very much an enabler and put no boundaries in place, so the children were also victims of her punitive rage; his coping mechanism was to turn a blind eye.   She'd beat both me and my sibling, standing us up for hours while she lectured us about what horrible children we were.  (F was a workaholic in a job that demanded many hours at the office.  We were at the mercy of our mother.)  M would throw just about anything she could get her hands on in a fit of rage at all of us, including F:  ceramic dishes (including plates of food), shoes, glassware, including our cherished possessions (for the children, cherished toys.)  We were told how we'd be abandoned at grocery stores for being naughty and angering her.  She once gave my brother, who was about six at the time, a bloody nose by slapping him in the face.   He ditched school that day rather than go to school with a weeping face and be jeered by classmates.   The incidents described in the Eggshells book really hit close to home. 

This B, sole sibling, suffers from obesity from food add iction as well as his S.  B never bothered to marry his S's mother, who was a drug addict and alcoholic who left the R/S while the S was an infant; she never saw the F nor her son again.  The B has not dated since this woman left him.  My nephew is morbidly obese, dropped out of college and quit work, malingering over supposed health issues.  He still lives at home.  He has an expensive home music studio in his F's garage that his F bought him, and he claims he wants to be a rock musician.  He is thirty years old and hasn't worked in eight years, so he is virtually unemployable.   His hair is dyed bright orange, with plugs in his ears.  He sleeps until the afternoon after playing video games all night.
 
My first H was very much BPD, complete with suicidal ideations and the whole lot.  He was a brilliant man, a professional, but very enmeshed with his M.  H allowed his mother to dictate matters in our marriage.  His M saw me as a rival for his S's affections and did not approve of the marriage even though she was divorce from her S's F and remarried.  In the end, he devalued me and left me one day.  He came home from work after five years of marriage, said he did not love me, that he never loved me, and just left.  I never saw him again.  The divorce was conducted through our lawyers.  I later found out he remarried three years later.

My current uBPD H was married to his childhood sweetheart, who is likely uNPD. He was young and in the military when he married.  After 10 years of marriage, she had an affair with a high school flame (who was also married) while her H was overseas in the military.  The lovers divorced their respective spouses and married each other, and the X W took the three children.  H was devastated and became depressed.  Now all of the children are around 30, and they are all in some spectrum of BPD or NPD.  The commonly use emotional blackmail to get what they want from their F:  money, vacations, expensive things.  It is worth noting that I am racially identical to H's X W, so there is some sort of subconscious motive he had for dating me.  Early in the marriage, it was clear, looking back, that H was using me as a punching bag for what his first W did to him.  I became his surrogate mannequin to take the abuse he wanted to throw at his cheating first W. 

[AskingWhy]

I have a very long fuse and it takes a lot for me to get angry. I don't like how it feels, but if and when I do get angry, I'm fully capable of meeting fire with fire. But that almost never occurs, because I'd much rather keep things calm and rational.

As many high-functioning BPDs have NPD features (as in Eggshells), sometimes fighting fire with fire is the only way to defend oneself.

I am also slow to anger, but when my boundaries have been so cruelly and carelessly breached, I am perfectly capable of putting my uBPD in his place.  At that point, all bets are off.

[braveSun]

For me, being in a situation where I am feeling vulnerable in my life did add this overall aspect to my intimate relationships.

For one person dwBPD it was a short term relationship and it did not work out. This person's behavior caused me to question myself in a massive way and the learning about PD and mental illness just changed my views on people and everything. 
 
For another person I have had a fairly long term relationship (20+) and did not think this person had BPD, but over time as well, and adding some traumatic events in the mix, I came to see my relationship with this person in different lights. I could not help but seeing traits, even though I could not for sure know if she was or not.

Maybe now I'm more of a product of my time and have a better understanding of what is healthy and what is not. But it's tricky in my situation because I have been raised a certain way as a woman, where I was expected to care for others before caring for myself, and than all of that changed on me over time.

So I'd say for people in my generation there is a social context to seeing our relationships in a different light. The suffering is not absent though. I wonder sometimes, how many of us have discovered after the fact that we may indeed have a relationship with someone with BPD, or NPD, or traits, or a parent had those traits, but we don't seem to have spotted them very much in the past.

Now that we have a language and the internet to reconciliate our experiences with so many other people from all over, we get to see it more maybe. We get to see that we didn't know better maybe.

So on for the experiences from my childhood as a young female child raised in the sixties.

I think the overall rush of validation and intensity of the love and appreciation of my partners at the onset has probably helped me lose my perspective while I was feeling vulnerable in my life at the time these people entered it.  I think it helped established a certain dynamic right there where I would expect this wonderful love to stay and not change into a more 'neutral' or challenging type of experience. 

Could we say for instance that rages and manipulative behaviors are that typical BPD or NPD? I used to think so. Now I am much more ambivalent. I see that we are a product of our time. With the instant communication tools we have access to nowadays, we can access a lot more information on what is out there and reflect on how our relationships are not meeting our needs quite right. (Or not at all.) We have learned some concepts, we want to be treated fairly, to be treated well by our partners. They in turn are never perfect, and if not for tolerance for human foibles, some alienation gets in there I would think.

For instance I have read recently that some studies have found a link between kids growing up with devices (phone, tablets, computers,..) being used to device rapid interference into their daily thought stream and  having difficulties to reflect deeply on one's own behaviors, beliefs and experiences. That's a thought provoking subject.

[Red5]

Why do we fall for those who have BPD?

*Repitition compulsion

*Codependent traits

If we can recognize these behavioral mechanisms within us, we can perhaps rewire these traits, automatic behaviors.

Red5

[AskingWhy]

I wonder how many of us were love bombed by our partners at the beginning of the R/S.

I was swept off my feet by both of my Hs.  I did not know what hit me.

[Notwendy]

I wasn't love bombed. He was emotionally unavailable from the get go but he did act invested at times. I was the one who tried too hard just to get a moment's attention. I didn't know any different. This is what it was like for me growing up. It felt familiar.

My H does have an amazing public persona. I did fall for that, but didn't know otherwise. It was after we married that I saw the "Mr. Hyde" side. People would tell me how wonderful my H was. He was only Mr. Hyde with me. Since he blamed me, I assumed it was my fault. This paralleled my childhood as my BPD mother also blamed me for any issues between us.

Mostly, the Jeckyll/Hyde drama has stopped now that I have worked on my own co-dependency issues. It would be  have been nice to have had more of that "puppy" love, however, that would not have pushed me to work on my own issues. I have read that we also attract and are attracted to people with whom we can work out our own childhood issues. I think Red has a point with the repetition.

[Forgiveness]

I wonder how many of us were love bombed by our partners at the beginning of the R/S.

I was swept off my feet by both of my Hs.  I did not know what hit me.

This. And I think the difference between NPD and BPD is that the person with NPD doesn't really love you. They love bomb you as a calculated strategy. The person with BPD is truly head over heels for you, but later becomes terrified and strikes out like a cornered animal, only because of the fact of being in a relationship. At least that was my experience.

[formflier]

  NPD doesn't really love you. They love bomb you as a calculated strategy. 

At least that was my experience.

It might be more helpful to suggest that NPD people "experience love" in quite different ways that "nons" or even people with BPD.

My understanding is it seems a bit more (perhaps a lot more) "transactional". 

I totally see how NPD can seem "calculating" and, for instance, someone that picks up a check for everyone at dinner "so they will love me" might be an example to compare with someone that picks up a check "because I love these people".  You can further see that these thoughts are on a spectrum, because over the course of my life I've picked up lots of checks for dinner and mostly because I'm a fan of the people I'm treating.  I certainly have also done it some to "improve a relationship with people" (because I want them to like me or like me more)

I often wonder if part of the NPD love bombing goes away because "nons" stop responding in the same way (which is natural, people just can't keep up the "newness" of love over a long time) which likely "feels like" rejection to NPD types, so then they "flip" to "persecution".

Full disclosure:  To my knowledge I don't have a lot of experience with NPD, yet I find it fascinating to read and think about.

Best,

FF

[Enabler]

I had the 'pleasure' of working for the world champion of NPD's... think 80's slick back hair New Yorkian hedge fund trader. The guy would literally have run over his mother for a $. He did buy dinner, a lot, and it wasn't because he was trying to make up for the abhorrent way that he treated me during the day, it was just because it meant that he could lord it over us... "I'm considerably richer than yoow!" When it came to relationships I saw him acrimoniously split from his first wife (he spent +$250k in lawyers) and then meet wife. Wife #2 was very much the trophy wife, just over half his age +7yrs, something he was very proud of, and a skinny Long Island Princess. Love bombing is a bit of an understatement, it was more love nuclear obliteration. Once he had her out of NY and into his house in London, it was a case of "You should love me because I am brilliant". He loved her loving him, love bombing was his way of showing you what he wanted her to think he was like. He loved what everyone would think of him having 'her' on his arm. Key features of this man, zero and I mean ZERO conscience, zero empathy, compulsive liar, extremely manipulative and when he was proven to be wrong would NEVER EVER accept it. He was so egocentric that he believed that he could lie on a regulatory application form... which inevitably was uncovered and he was fired. He still calls occasionally to tell me that he's 'got something cooking' and he'll 'be back in a seat soon'... his finest moment was in a taxi driving back to London shortly after he'd lost us a great seat at a top international hedge fund through lying on his application form (I'd been out of work for 20 months)... "It's not like I think I'll ever own my own plane, I think I've got flying private in me". 

My W on the other hand love bombed me because she genuinely thought I was the answer to ALL of her life's problems. She put me on an impossible pedistool which IO was inevitably likely to slip from. I was fine as long as I was rescuing her from the emotional crisis of being along at university. She didn't love me for my genuine credentials, she loved an idealised version of me. Since those heady days she's stuck with me because she needed me, I served a purpose of making her life better. Who else would take responsibility for her... she sure didn't want to.

Enabler 

[Cat Familiar]

Lovebombing is certainly enticing. But how can one differentiate between lovebombing and falling in love? Perhaps too much too soon.

And the amazing side that’s put forth at the beginning—well we all present at our best when we first start a relationship, otherwise that relationship would be destined for the trash bin. How can we know if someone is presenting a side of themselves that is not truly reflective of their totality?

And why are we attracted to this person in the first place? Do they feel like family? Do we desire to have a circumstance where we can work out unresolved family issues?

It’s true that we can’t keep up the “newness” of a relationship, though it may seem possible at the beginning for those of us who are overly optimistic.

How can we intuit if someone is trying to manipulate us with overly effusive acts of kindness or if they are genuinely showing us their love and appreciation?

And when all our masks slip as we become familiar with our partners, how can we appreciate them, foibles and all?

[Notwendy]

How would we know?

I read somewhere that it had to do with boundaries and it isn't a conscious feeling. Since people with PD's have poor boundaries, someone with emotionally healthy boundaries would feel uneasy with them as the relationship got a bit closer. They would break it off- and feel OK doing that. Somehow a person who also didn't have good boundaries would continue it.

I can agree with this. I know my boundaries were "off" considering how I grew up. I was used to feeling overly responsible for someone else's feelings. I also was used to my own boundaries being invaded. I didn't know how to say "no" and be OK if that caused someone else some disappointment. I just tried too hard to be liked. I would say my boundaries leaned to the weak side.

We can have weak boundaries or too strong ones. Neither one is emotionally healthy. We should be able to be more vulnerable in an intimate relationship and also to have stronger boundaries in a more formal relationship. I think initially when dating, our boundaries should be towards the formal side and ease up as we get closer. This is why the too fast too soon can be a red flag.

But so is the other way. My H has iron clad boundaries. He won't let anyone in. I think I was initially attracted to it because my mother was out of control. Her emotions were all over the place. This seemed like stability to me and I wanted that. But iron clad boundaries don't allow emotional intimacy.

Our MC told me that the opposite of what we see as dysfunction could also be dysfunction. If we don't know what is "normal" how do we know to look for that?

[formflier]

  I know my boundaries were "off" considering how I grew up. 

I have the same feeling about my childhood.  In an odd way, the lack of dysfunction over conditioned me to "give people the benefit of the doubt".

We didn't have strong boundaries as a family (internally to the family) but it didn't really cause a problem (that I can perceive).

I never saw any reason for parents to "set boundaries" with each other.  I definitely saw the example of being open and "doing more than your fair share without worrying about what the other person was doing".

So, when things went weird I "gave more" when I would have been better off to "withdraw" and let her sort out her own stuff.

Best,

FF

[Forgiveness]

Enabler, that is a very vivid and accurate portrayal of both NPD and BPD.

I take responsibility for having fallen in love with my girlfriend too quickly. I fell in love with  my own idealized version of her. I don't think I have a personality disorder, however I was grieving and very lonely at the time.