Complicated Lives

[Depression = 72% of members]

I don't even know where to begin with this. I met a girl in September of 2019. My first experience with her splitting came several months into the relationship while on vacation to see her family. It was incredibly difficult. I didn't know what it was then. As the months went by, I became highly concerned as the behaviors while she was splitting represented that of narcissism. She had been given a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, but I disagreed with the initial diagnosis. I have solid knowledge of the DSM because of my college education and the field I work in. Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago and she has finally told me the name of the alternate personality that she has. And last week I find out about an alternate life she has been living for 3 months or so. She's a lifelong addict. When the alternate life began, she had relapsed, but not on the usual alcohol. I found out in a complicated matter and at first thought she had been cheating on me. Being an empath and having a long conversation with her, I feel pretty firm in the knowledge that she has not been unfaithful in terms of full intimacy. She has told me the last time she used was the 9th of January. Anyway, she has not been properly diagnosed with BPD. I've researched extensively and would bet my life that she does. And last night, as we talked about the traits and talked about the splitting, the more it sank in for her and she agrees with the potential diagnosis. She cried for a long time and I just held her. Unfortunately, because she has led the double life for so long, I find it incredibly hard to trust her. This morning she had 16 new messages on her phone and a missed call. I don't have the ability to get into her phone and look for myself, and it's very much a subject that I know can cause her to split. She split last night and after letting her rage for 20 minutes, I got her to the point where I could use some DBT techniques to calm back down. But I know it isn't always going to be effective, especially when she is splitting and seeing me as the source of all evil. I need to bring up the messages with her. I need to know what else, if anything, there is that she has done/gotten herself wrapped up into. The people she got involved with are very dangerous. I am fearing for her safety and the safety of her kids at this point. I do not want to turn to state interference or law enforcement. I just don't know what I can do to keep her calm enough to bring this up to her. I know she feels safe with me. Sex is a trigger for her. She has always split on everyone she has slept with. She's never split on me while we have been having sex, and I get now why she has always been absolutely fascinated with having sex with me (outside of it being an addiction, of course), as she couldn't figure out why she couldn't bring her "deeper self" out while being intimate with me. I'm only the third person in her life that she has told about the alternate personality. She began EMDR 3 months ago which has triggered rapid and excessive splitting, that last for multiple days. She never finished the treatment, and she never told any of the doctors about her alternate personality. She is incredibly scared of the stigma and the stereotypes that come along with it. I want to continue to be there for her and to support her and get her back to her counseling sessions since it's incredibly important she finishes the EMDR sessions. I also need her to be honest and tell them about the alternate personality, the rages, the addictions, the attention seeking, all of it. But I need to know what is going on with these other people she has hidden from me, because they have largely involved other men. While she has not been sexually unfaithful, I have seen a conversation with one of them where heavy boundaries are crossed. She also used to be a webcam girl right before I met her, and know that it's possible that some of that is also going on. I really don't know what to doz and there is of course more than just all of this happening. I'm scared, nervous and afraid. I don't want to leave this woman. She has never had a lover who had not been abusive towards her, so it was easy for her to split on them and hate them and just continue to hate them. When she is splitting on me, she has begun to make suicidal and self-harm statements. We have talked about hospitalization but she does not want to go. I could use some help. I have only begun to scratch the surface on borderline. I'm willing to do all the work to familiarize myself with it. Whatever it takes. Thank you.

[justanerd]

I don't even know where to begin with this. I met a girl in September of 2019. My first experience with her splitting came several months into the relationship while on vacation to see her family. It was incredibly difficult. I didn't know what it was then. As the months went by, I became highly concerned as the behaviors while she was splitting represented that of narcissism. She had been given a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, but I disagreed with the initial diagnosis. I have solid knowledge of the DSM because of my college education and the field I work in. Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago and she has finally told me the name of the alternate personality that she has. And last week I find out about an alternate life she has been living for 3 months or so. She's a lifelong addict. When the alternate life began, she had relapsed, but not on the usual alcohol. I found out in a complicated matter and at first thought she had been cheating on me. Being an empath and having a long conversation with her, I feel pretty firm in the knowledge that she has not been unfaithful in terms of full intimacy. She has told me the last time she used was the 9th of January. Anyway, she has not been properly diagnosed with BPD. I've researched extensively and would bet my life that she does. And last night, as we talked about the traits and talked about the splitting, the more it sank in for her and she agrees with the potential diagnosis. She cried for a long time and I just held her. Unfortunately, because she has led the double life for so long, I find it incredibly hard to trust her. This morning she had 16 new messages on her phone and a missed call. I don't have the ability to get into her phone and look for myself, and it's very much a subject that I know can cause her to split. She split last night and after letting her rage for 20 minutes, I got her to the point where I could use some DBT techniques to calm back down. But I know it isn't always going to be effective, especially when she is splitting and seeing me as the source of all evil. I need to bring up the messages with her. I need to know what else, if anything, there is that she has done/gotten herself wrapped up into. The people she got involved with are very dangerous. I am fearing for her safety and the safety of her kids at this point. I do not want to turn to state interference or law enforcement. I just don't know what I can do to keep her calm enough to bring this up to her. I know she feels safe with me. Sex is a trigger for her. She has always split on everyone she has slept with. She's never split on me while we have been having sex, and I get now why she has always been absolutely fascinated with having sex with me (outside of it being an addiction, of course), as she couldn't figure out why she couldn't bring her "deeper self" out while being intimate with me. I'm only the third person in her life that she has told about the alternate personality. She began EMDR 3 months ago which has triggered rapid and excessive splitting, that last for multiple days. She never finished the treatment, and she never told any of the doctors about her alternate personality. She is incredibly scared of the stigma and the stereotypes that come along with it. I want to continue to be there for her and to support her and get her back to her counseling sessions since it's incredibly important she finishes the EMDR sessions. I also need her to be honest and tell them about the alternate personality, the rages, the addictions, the attention seeking, all of it. But I need to know what is going on with these other people she has hidden from me, because they have largely involved other men. While she has not been sexually unfaithful, I have seen a conversation with one of them where heavy boundaries are crossed. She also used to be a webcam girl right before I met her, and know that it's possible that some of that is also going on. I really don't know what to doz and there is of course more than just all of this happening. I'm scared, nervous and afraid. I don't want to leave this woman. She has never had a lover who had not been abusive towards her, so it was easy for her to split on them and hate them and just continue to hate them. When she is splitting on me, she has begun to make suicidal and self-harm statements. We have talked about hospitalization but she does not want to go. I could use some help. I have only begun to scratch the surface on borderline. I'm willing to do all the work to familiarize myself with it. Whatever it takes. Thank you.

[PLEASE - NO RUN MESSAGES]

PLEASE - NO RUN MESSAGES This is a high level discussion board for solving ongoing, day-to-day relationship conflicts. Members may appear frustrated but they are here for constructive solutions to problems. This is not a place for relationship "stay" or "leave" discussions. Please read the specific guidelines for this group.

[Cat Familiar]

It sounds like you’re trying to be her therapist and at the same time, her lover. This is not a workable situation for the long term.

What about you leads you to wanting to be her rescuer? Is this a relationship that you want to be permanent?

[justanerd]

Not interested in rescuing her. Interested in supporting her. She's the one that needs to do all the work. Now that she knows what she needs to do, it's going to be up to her to do those things. The problem is talking to her about the problems in our relationship without triggering her. I don't know if there are any possible ways that I can sit her down and prepare her for a tough conversation without causing her to split. Especially while she is untreated and misdiagnosed. She made the first steps for treatment over the summer and was doing okay. However, she had been misdiagnosed, and the EMDR that was used without the proper techniques in place for BPD opened a pandora's box. I don't want to be her therapist or her doctor or anything like that. I want to be her life partner. I've got my own life to manage.

[Cat Familiar]

It’s a big ask to get a BPD partner to take the steps leading to improving their emotional health.

How about talking with us about the relationship problems you’d like to speak to her about? We can troubleshoot potential issues that might cause her discomfort and come up with some strategies for you that might be less triggering.

[justanerd]

Currently, I'm still stinging from a few months ago when she decided to go on a date with another man. It's up in the air whether or not she paid for the tattoo she got. She says she made sure his intentions were not romantic. The signs were all there for it. I suppose now understanding BPD a little more, I can see how some of the signs I saw as obvious were not so obvious for her. Most recently, there was a man who tried to face time her at 2am one night. She explained him as just some weird guy. He then began posting on her social media. Part of the attention seeking she does currently is putting on makeup and dresses and posting them. Last week, I got a call from her son's school. They couldn't get ahold of her. I tried calling her and her phone went straight to voicemail. I ended up picking up her son and taking him home. When I went into her room and she wasn't there. It was about 1030 in the morning. I had left her place the night before at 2am after we had been in an argument. Her son told me that she had been awake when he left. She had been texting me until 4am (I had been asleep by 3, so was not responding as she was continuing to berate me). She typically doesn't sleep if I'm not around as she does not feel safe because she has been experiencing very intense nightmares since she started her EMDR. I checked her Facebook to see if I could find where she might have gone (there have been a couple of people she had been telling me she was trying to rescue from a heroin addiction, but would never allow me to meet them and would not bring them around me and vise versa). I found a conversation with another man who was calling her baby and she had called him babe and told him she had gone to the casino (which she had been going quite a bit and was something we were already fighting about - I'm an addict, 19 years sober, and I was concerned she was exhibiting a gambling addiction. She had actually won $10,000 but lost it all within a month - I had just found out two days prior to this about her losing all of the money). She had sent a message to him that read "I need you" the same line she sends me when she is wanting me to come over and be intimate with her. I messaged the guy and told him that he needed to let her know that I had to pick up her son from school and that I wanted my apartment key back. Within 3 minutes she called, told me she had given up on us two weeks ago, and that we were done. That had been on Thursday last week. She would later tell me she had never slept with the guy, she had been buying coke from him. She says she wasn't using consistently (like she said she hadn't been gambling much). On Sunday she called me in crisis, saying she had been drugged and was locked in her room. I show up to her place, and she had already called that guy to come and get her out because she was sure that I had been texting her kids and asking them about her relationship with the other guy (which the kids had vouched that I had not had any contact with them at all). Turns out she had not eaten or slept in days and she had been in the middle of a medical problem. Anyway, last night is the night she and I talked about her potentially having BPD. This morning when I left, her phone lit up - she had 16 missed messages, two of them from tiktok (which she told me she had never linked to her phone so she couldn't get messages from it), and a missed call... From the dude. Empathically, I feel that she is being honest about not being unfaithful. However, it could be desperation that I'm reading in her statements that she needs me to believe so that I will remain around. She had been gambling and using coke for months, and says she hasn't used since the 9th. She wants me to believe all of this even though she hid it all from me... and there is obviously still other things going on. She's been a little more stable the last few days, other than a crisis she got in yesterday morning and began accusing me of making her feel suicidal and saying she has never felt suicidal before (I'm the first relationship she has ever been in where I do not physically or mentally or emotionally abuse her). Last night was the first night I've stayed with her for three weeks. She has told me she has blocked the people she was having this alternate life with, but i really don't believe that she has done this. She is feeling better, but she is still lying. I want to have this conversation with her that I feel like there are still things happening that make it so that we cannot continue to be together. I need honesty and stability in a relationship. I'd like to have a really calm conversation about it, like we had last night about the BPD and two weeks ago when she told me about her alternate. I sent her a message today explaining that I want to talk, and that I need her to communicate with me when she is feeling in a space where she can handle a difficult conversation. But I really think that as soon as I bring up I saw missed call from dude, messages from tiktok she said she hadn't allowed to send and receive messages from, and the 14 other messages that I'm worried about are all potentially different men that she has flirted with in order to obtain things from.

She was already in therapy, as I said. She started early 2020. But was misdiagnosed. She just needs to tell them about the dissociating, the splitting, rages, addictions, and whatever else she has not told them about that led to the wrong diagnosis in the first place.

[Cat Familiar]

If you need honesty and stability in a relationship, it seems unlikely you will ever get that from her. Are you harboring hopes that she might change enough through therapy to be the person you want in your life?

[justanerd]

I know it will always be there. My hopes for her treatment is that it won't be so frequent, and maybe potentially won't have to last as long. If I can have the person I love within her more present than not, that's all I need.

I talked to her about things last night. She didn't split. I know I have to be cautious, but I'm really learning how to communicate with her. She started doing her own research on it. She wants to wait to tell her therapist. I can give her the time she needs to prepare herself, but obviously I can't be with her if she chooses to remain untreated forever. It's her choice. Her kids need her to be healthy. I'm being as encouraging as I can be.