Soft devaluation (quiet BPD)

[Beware of Junk Psychology...]

I would like to discuss the disparity between the concept of the r/s cycle of a borderline and my own observations in my most recent r/s with a quiet type borderline.

The cycle is usually summarized by idealization, devalue and discard. I may have understood something incorrectly but to my knowledge the devalue stage always sounded very abrupt. I am not sure if it's also more of a factor in "regular" BPD. My experience was as follows:

1. Match on Tinder in September 2020. She contacts me first. We instantly bond over politics and similar hobbies.
2. I notice early on she has some serious codependent issues. I even tell her that we should only be friends. She talks me out of it with her sincerity and openness.
3. She plays the victim early on. We get intimate; she tells me the past 10 years of her life (as a 26 year old or so when we started communicating) was all abuse and rape in r/s's. I am shocked and overcome with feelings of empathy. I vow to myself to take care of this delicate little person.
4. We see each other for a couple of months. She lives a town or two over. I take the bus on a Friday evening and get home by Sunday.
5. A few months in, after we decide openly to be in a r/s, she starts having freezing episodes. Sometimes she would get an episode right before I was supposed to take the bus. I always tell her I'm coming anyway.
6. We see at her place much of the time, she being "too tired" to take the bus to come to me. She starts having episodes while I'm at her place. She freezes, tells me she's a bad egg and should be left alone. CRITICAL: at this point, I mistake perhaps at least half-genuine hints that she is too unwell to be in an intimate r/s for pleas for support.
7. We "realize" that we need to live together to counter her episodes and make both of us feel safe. She is very enthusiastic about this. We plan for her to secure a new job and move to the capital city area where I live.
8. She is offered a promotion at her job that would critically also ensure she would be able to work from home. We start planning moving together at about 4 months of communication.
9. She moves in in June 2021. This is the end of idealization phase in earnest to me. Not perhaps exactly the moment she moves in, but a gradual descent into devaluation.

10. We have terrible fights in the autumn and winter of 2021. Freezing turns to fighting for her. I get madder than ever, lashing out. Not touching her but getting violent at furniture, screaming. A lot of pretend breakups to diffuse the situations.
11. Sex gets complicated. She was rather unreserved before and seemingly willing to indulge my kinkier ideas, but it all starts to wind down. She abruptly backtracks and says she isn't comfortable with the things she had willingly set out for earlier.
12. We get into a habit of having sex every day, then we establish that that routine takes the joy out of it and it becomes almost a chore for us so we start thinking about the timing and everything. I sense that she's "putting out" out of a need to keep me satisfied instead of wanting it herself.
13. Thinking back now I realize sex had completely changed for us. She doesn't take a positive word from me regarding anything and instead sees me for example complimenting her on her figure as an opportunity to yap about her body issues. I start feeling like some sort of hands-on sexual therapist for her.
14. While this all is happening, she bonds with my best friend over mutual hobbies and interests. He buys her extravagant birthday presents and displays an unnerving level of fawning over her. She tells me it's alright, she is not interested in him, not her type, yada yada. I don't want to seem jealous so I mostly brush it off.
15. She still exhibits fawning behavior towards me but it feels more... business-y by this time. She passively tells me everything I tell her is fascinating but the conversations rarely go anywhere. Except when we just rant about a third person or phenomenon together. I suspect it's a pattern of using drama triangles to keep the feeling of intimacy in a r/s.
16. We keep having dreadful, dreadful fights. I ask her to move out. She threatens to dump me. I yield for a time.
17. I finally ask her to move out in early Spring this year. She relents and agrees. She finds a place in my neighborhood in the beginning of May. We are moving into the endgame.

18. I gain more confidence living alone, not having to fear for her tantrums happening in my home. I start asserting my boundaries and "talking back" to her which I had quit doing during our first months together.
19. We see each other maybe once a week. She often freezes and leaves me when I assert my emotional needs. Dreadful fights, only on WA and Discord now.
20. Lots of threats of breakup during this short period.
21. I push the envelope harder than before, telling her we REALLY need to breakup. She at first disagrees, but then relents. We agree to breakup. Then we settle for taking a light break. Then she tells me she needs a proper break. Doesn't tell me how long it will last but that I just need to trust her.
22. Two weeks in I'm wracked by stress and break NC with her. It becomes apparent she has made up her mind that she wants to break up with me, and later on I learn she's been seeing my best friend "a few times" during the break. She acts amicable during the breakup and it feels unnerving to me. Still does.
23. She picks her things from my place, I establish NC with both of them.

And that's where I'm now. Next Wednesday marks 4 weeks of NC with both her and my ex best friend.

The gist is, I never felt an abrupt devalue phase. Did she just devalue me right at the end or did it start earlier? I suspect the devalue started when she started feeling comfortable enough. Moving in, establishing a passive source of supply. It felt more like just an end to idealization in a gradual way. Some of the folks on this forum have mentioned that sexually the person with BPD will start latching onto other people's sexual attention and perhaps hand-wave away their partner's advances. That's definitely how it felt to me. She excused the "dry spells" as just that, a normal period of not being super interested in sex. I never caught her sending nudes or displaying sexual infidelity but I will never know.

[Tupla Sport]

I would like to discuss the disparity between the concept of the r/s cycle of a borderline and my own observations in my most recent r/s with a quiet type borderline.

The cycle is usually summarized by idealization, devalue and discard. I may have understood something incorrectly but to my knowledge the devalue stage always sounded very abrupt. I am not sure if it's also more of a factor in "regular" BPD. My experience was as follows:

1. Match on Tinder in September 2020. She contacts me first. We instantly bond over politics and similar hobbies.
2. I notice early on she has some serious codependent issues. I even tell her that we should only be friends. She talks me out of it with her sincerity and openness.
3. She plays the victim early on. We get intimate; she tells me the past 10 years of her life (as a 26 year old or so when we started communicating) was all abuse and rape in r/s's. I am shocked and overcome with feelings of empathy. I vow to myself to take care of this delicate little person.
4. We see each other for a couple of months. She lives a town or two over. I take the bus on a Friday evening and get home by Sunday.
5. A few months in, after we decide openly to be in a r/s, she starts having freezing episodes. Sometimes she would get an episode right before I was supposed to take the bus. I always tell her I'm coming anyway.
6. We see at her place much of the time, she being "too tired" to take the bus to come to me. She starts having episodes while I'm at her place. She freezes, tells me she's a bad egg and should be left alone. CRITICAL: at this point, I mistake perhaps at least half-genuine hints that she is too unwell to be in an intimate r/s for pleas for support.
7. We "realize" that we need to live together to counter her episodes and make both of us feel safe. She is very enthusiastic about this. We plan for her to secure a new job and move to the capital city area where I live.
8. She is offered a promotion at her job that would critically also ensure she would be able to work from home. We start planning moving together at about 4 months of communication.
9. She moves in in June 2021. This is the end of idealization phase in earnest to me. Not perhaps exactly the moment she moves in, but a gradual descent into devaluation.

10. We have terrible fights in the autumn and winter of 2021. Freezing turns to fighting for her. I get madder than ever, lashing out. Not touching her but getting violent at furniture, screaming. A lot of pretend breakups to diffuse the situations.
11. Sex gets complicated. She was rather unreserved before and seemingly willing to indulge my kinkier ideas, but it all starts to wind down. She abruptly backtracks and says she isn't comfortable with the things she had willingly set out for earlier.
12. We get into a habit of having sex every day, then we establish that that routine takes the joy out of it and it becomes almost a chore for us so we start thinking about the timing and everything. I sense that she's "putting out" out of a need to keep me satisfied instead of wanting it herself.
13. Thinking back now I realize sex had completely changed for us. She doesn't take a positive word from me regarding anything and instead sees me for example complimenting her on her figure as an opportunity to yap about her body issues. I start feeling like some sort of hands-on sexual therapist for her.
14. While this all is happening, she bonds with my best friend over mutual hobbies and interests. He buys her extravagant birthday presents and displays an unnerving level of fawning over her. She tells me it's alright, she is not interested in him, not her type, yada yada. I don't want to seem jealous so I mostly brush it off.
15. She still exhibits fawning behavior towards me but it feels more... business-y by this time. She passively tells me everything I tell her is fascinating but the conversations rarely go anywhere. Except when we just rant about a third person or phenomenon together. I suspect it's a pattern of using drama triangles to keep the feeling of intimacy in a r/s.
16. We keep having dreadful, dreadful fights. I ask her to move out. She threatens to dump me. I yield for a time.
17. I finally ask her to move out in early Spring this year. She relents and agrees. She finds a place in my neighborhood in the beginning of May. We are moving into the endgame.

18. I gain more confidence living alone, not having to fear for her tantrums happening in my home. I start asserting my boundaries and "talking back" to her which I had quit doing during our first months together.
19. We see each other maybe once a week. She often freezes and leaves me when I assert my emotional needs. Dreadful fights, only on WA and Discord now.
20. Lots of threats of breakup during this short period.
21. I push the envelope harder than before, telling her we REALLY need to breakup. She at first disagrees, but then relents. We agree to breakup. Then we settle for taking a light break. Then she tells me she needs a proper break. Doesn't tell me how long it will last but that I just need to trust her.
22. Two weeks in I'm wracked by stress and break NC with her. It becomes apparent she has made up her mind that she wants to break up with me, and later on I learn she's been seeing my best friend "a few times" during the break. She acts amicable during the breakup and it feels unnerving to me. Still does.
23. She picks her things from my place, I establish NC with both of them.

And that's where I'm now. Next Wednesday marks 4 weeks of NC with both her and my ex best friend.

The gist is, I never felt an abrupt devalue phase. Did she just devalue me right at the end or did it start earlier? I suspect the devalue started when she started feeling comfortable enough. Moving in, establishing a passive source of supply. It felt more like just an end to idealization in a gradual way. Some of the folks on this forum have mentioned that sexually the person with BPD will start latching onto other people's sexual attention and perhaps hand-wave away their partner's advances. That's definitely how it felt to me. She excused the "dry spells" as just that, a normal period of not being super interested in sex. I never caught her sending nudes or displaying sexual infidelity but I will never know.

[Torimagic]

I just wanted to say thank you for sharing your story. It is so strange reading the first 11 points because it is so similar. She started to freeze on month 2 which was really heartbreaking to watch, and initially I thought it was PTSD. I broke up with her at 6 months when it turned to the anger, but trying to now have a friendship which has been really hard. Everything with the sex was exactly the same thing too. I feel like the trying to be friends has been the devaluation part. The relationship like you said was a slow fade of idealization for the 6 months.

[once removed]

these terms; terms like "idealize, devalue, discard", are generalized terms to help someone who may be new to BPD to identify the experience, and, in part, give some explanation.

i think that it can be a mistake to invest too strongly in seeing our relationships in these terms. relationships all have stages. relationships all have a "honeymoon" stage. marriages have a "seven year itch".

think of it more as a 30000 foot view than a direct explanation as it applies to what exactly was going on in your relationship.