Why do I seem to attract so many BPDs into my life?

[Depression = 72% of members]

So I've posted on here a fair amount about my BPD ex girlfriend, it being an incredibly difficult breakup, and how slow the recovery process has been to get over her.   I am currently 3+ months post breakup, although I am doing a lot better, I still have a lot of painful ruminations.  They are nowhere near as painful as they were at the beginning, but still there is some sting behind those memories.   To add some additional relevant information, I've had 2 previous relationships with BPD women, one of whom was later diagnosed by a professional first hard, the other who was diagnosed but I don't know the details about how or if it was a professional or self-diagnosis. So this most recent breakup was my third lifetime relationship with a BPD woman.

The biggest problem has been continued ruminations about my ex.   They have lost a lot of the power that was behind them.   I remember when we first broke up, I would sometimes have a particularly powerful rumination that would cause me to double over as if in physical pain.   Now the pain is a lot less, but the ruminations are still fairly frequent.   I have been doing so many things, including therapy, that I don't really know for sure what is helping me to reduce my ruminations.   I wonder if anyone has tried any of the online programs designed to specifically help with this?   There are a few online courses I've seen aimed at dissolving the trauma bond between us and our BPD exes.

I've also noticed that some people who have entered my life recently seem to have BPD traits.   I'm not sure if I'm just seeing that particular set of traits because I'm hyper vigilant for it now, but one woman I asked did a self-diagnosis and said it absolutely described her, when she started reading about classic BPD traits such as intense fear of abandonment, extreme emotions, seeing things black and white, disassociations, etc.   I was a little shocked wondering what I am doing to attract so many people who have diagnosed BPD (or self-diagnosed BPD traits) into my life.   It is something now that causes me to run away in the other direction.

I used to be a rescuer, but now my boundaries are pretty firm --- even too firm now --- so I'm truly not sure what it is I am doing.

[capecodling]

So I've posted on here a fair amount about my BPD ex girlfriend, it being an incredibly difficult breakup, and how slow the recovery process has been to get over her.   I am currently 3+ months post breakup, although I am doing a lot better, I still have a lot of painful ruminations.  They are nowhere near as painful as they were at the beginning, but still there is some sting behind those memories.   To add some additional relevant information, I've had 2 previous relationships with BPD women, one of whom was later diagnosed by a professional first hard, the other who was diagnosed but I don't know the details about how or if it was a professional or self-diagnosis. So this most recent breakup was my third lifetime relationship with a BPD woman.

The biggest problem has been continued ruminations about my ex.   They have lost a lot of the power that was behind them.   I remember when we first broke up, I would sometimes have a particularly powerful rumination that would cause me to double over as if in physical pain.   Now the pain is a lot less, but the ruminations are still fairly frequent.   I have been doing so many things, including therapy, that I don't really know for sure what is helping me to reduce my ruminations.   I wonder if anyone has tried any of the online programs designed to specifically help with this?   There are a few online courses I've seen aimed at dissolving the trauma bond between us and our BPD exes.

I've also noticed that some people who have entered my life recently seem to have BPD traits.   I'm not sure if I'm just seeing that particular set of traits because I'm hyper vigilant for it now, but one woman I asked did a self-diagnosis and said it absolutely described her, when she started reading about classic BPD traits such as intense fear of abandonment, extreme emotions, seeing things black and white, disassociations, etc.   I was a little shocked wondering what I am doing to attract so many people who have diagnosed BPD (or self-diagnosed BPD traits) into my life.   It is something now that causes me to run away in the other direction.

I used to be a rescuer, but now my boundaries are pretty firm --- even too firm now --- so I'm truly not sure what it is I am doing.

[Cat Familiar]

I’ve certainly attracted pwBPD into my life too: 2 husbands, possibly an ex boyfriend, and undoubtedly more than one friend.

Why? Well, among other things, I’m emotionally stable and safe, and I grew up with an undiagnosed BPD mother. Behaviors I’ve tolerated would send people who grew up in emotionally healthy homes running for the door.

In addition, I’ve mistaken the *sensitivity* that comes at the beginning of BPD relationships for true emotional sensitivity, not the narcissistic type of sensitivity that unfolds given time with pwBPD.

I’ve been a rescuer too, and that seems to have a magnetic pull, drawing in various types who love their victimhood.

Boundaries, boundaries, boundaries…and learning not to give a f* when I hear a suspicious sob story.

[Augustine]

Well, I’m inclined to believe that the decimal point in the “1.6% of the population suffers from BPD” statistic was an input error, and that 16% is closer to the mark.

1.6% means that the likelihood of having a relationship with one is vanishingly small, yet the internet is practically collapsing under the weight of all the survivor stories out there. 

My best friend is certainly BPD, and we’ve loads of fallouts over the years. I only connected the dots recently.

Looking back, my last three relationships were a progressive study in BPD, with each worse than the preceding one.

Looking back over the last fifteen years, the women I briefly dated were 100% dyed in the wool BPD as well. 

Interestingly, in a recent study, 50% of the partners of Borderlines were also found to have a personality disorder, with Antisocial being the dominant one, and Avoidant also being prevalent as well. In this study, all of the females had BPD, and the pairing was exclusively heterosexual.

[once removed]

it isnt that you attract them.

if you are as close to an objectively great person as possible, lots of people will be attracted to you, for lots of different reasons. surely thats not a bad thing in and of itself, right?

if dysfunctional relationships are happening to you, repeatedly, as it did to me, you are the common denominator.

it is what you are attracted to.

I'm not sure if I'm just seeing that particular set of traits because I'm hyper vigilant for it now,

what i said above mostly applies to your longer term, closer, more intimate relationships. youll have lots of difficulities, with difficult, and challenging people, with or without bpd traits, however close you are to them.

we might maintain safe relationships with difficult people for a variety of reasons, but the people that we really connect with closely, says something about them, and us.

you probably are hyper vigilant about bpd. i was. i think its very easy to do when youre learning about it.

but the truth is, while clinical BPD is about 2% of the population, there are far, far more, with subclinical traits. at any given time, there is 30% of the population dealing with some form of mental illness.

there are a lot of people out there, with all kinds of traits, difficulties, baggage, immaturities. some you want to keep away from. some you want to keep some distance from. some you want in your life, but not too much. some you want more of in your life.

there isnt a target, or some hidden vulnerability or susceptibility that you need to nip in the bud to ward off people with bpd traits. anyone in the world might be attracted to you. the people you are connecting with, and struggling with, are what youre attracted to.

[EyesUp]

I’ve certainly attracted pwBPD into my life too: 2 husbands, possibly an ex boyfriend, and undoubtedly more than one friend.

Why? Well, among other things, I’m emotionally stable and safe, and I grew up with an undiagnosed BPD mother. Behaviors I’ve tolerated would send people who grew up in emotionally healthy homes running for the door.

In addition, I’ve mistaken the *sensitivity* that comes at the beginning of BPD relationships for true emotional sensitivity, not the narcissistic type of sensitivity that unfolds given time with pwBPD.

I’ve been a rescuer too, and that seems to have a magnetic pull, drawing in various types who love their victimhood.

Boundaries, boundaries, boundaries…and learning not to give a f* when I hear a suspicious sob story.

swap pronouns, and this is my story too.

only married once, and probably at least 2 ex girlfriends, though... 

unsurprisingly, my therapist encouraged me to examine this. 

in my case, I believe I was parentified by my uBPD single mother and along the way I developed an impulse to rescue, or a desire to feel valued by being helpful - as a way to seek appreciation or recognition - and it's all downhill from there.

I'm sure we all have our own individual dynamics, but it's uncanny how similar some patterns are.

one thing that I haven't been able to figure out is how I clearly see red flags with some individuals, and I miss them or miss-read them completely with others. i.e., there have been people in my life who I recognized were unhealthy and kept at distance, while I've completely missed similar dynamics in others that I've found attractive and purposefully developed relationships with. in hindsight, I wonder why I was willing to overlook / unable to see the red flags.

in terms of romantic relationships, I've had to learn a very basic distinction between meeting someone with genuine attraction vs. meeting someone with a high libido and/or a tendency to use physical intimacy as a proxy... to be fair, I've always been relatively selective - even so, I've had to carefully consider why I may or may not be attracted to a potential romantic partner.

in non-romantic personal and professional relationships, I've become increasingly attuned to individuals who like drama, who engage in wide-ranging meta discussions (so interesting!) but never actually deliver the work or take action they like to discuss (i.e., they expect me or others  to do it for them), who frequently find fault in others (vs. pursue and celebrate whatever makes them happy), and who are predictably self-interested (i.e., demonstrate basic narc traits).

all that said, like OP, I have become increasingly sensitive and guarded over time. and I'm ok with that.

[GlennT]

I think many of us have caught BPD fleas or what Jung called Archtypes-Universal, inherited, subconscious, behavior, from other personality disordered individuals and what I call emotional vampirism.  

[capecodling]

I agree with many of the points above, there are just a lot of them out there, and having these experiences makes us more aware of those traits and better able to spot them.  It really explains so much about previous relationships, which didn’t make any sense at the time but now i can spot some of the same trends.  There was also a streak of narcissism in me that got off on rescuing the “damsel in distress” and henceforth having her unending love and adoration.  I can see how narcissistic I was being in some of those situations, which was another reason I was attracting and selecting so many BPD women because oftentimes the BPDs partner with avoidants and narcissists.

[Pensive1]

I think this is pretty common.

People recapitulate what they grew up with. A term you'll find in the trauma literature is "repetition compulsion" - unconsciously recreating early trauma (e.g. at the hands of a caregiver with a personality disorder). There's a lot written about this in the Schema Therapy literature.

I still do find it a bit surprising that BPD entered my life so frequently. I was adopted at birth. My adoptive mom had BPD (and was alcoholic). Relatively recently I found my birth family - my one full birth sibling (a sister) has BPD, her daughter has BPD, and my birth mother had, at a minimum, strong borderline traits. Every woman I've fallen for had some major mental illness (though I only realized this later). My ex-wife is bipolar, my 25 year ex-partner has BPD (and her son - my stepson - also has BPD), and the other woman that I fell most deeply for had DID.

My 25 year ex-partner with BPD had an NPD mother and malignant NPD stepfather, and she almost exclusively dated narcissists. I was one of the few exceptions, and by far her longest relationship. Amidst a very stressful family crisis, she left me for another narcissist.

My best friend exclusively dated narcissists, recapitulating childhood trauma at the hands of a narcissist, until she was finally able to stop that pattern via determination and years of therapy.

I tend to think there's some mutual attraction in these situations. I tend to self-sacrifice for other people, and have more emotional awareness than most guys, so I can see how I and a woman with BPD, swimming in emotions, can be drawn to each other. And, as has already been noted, people who grew up in dysfunctional families will often tolerate behaviors in a prospctive partner that would cause a healthy person to run away. Incidentally, I'm determined to break my pattern of dating people with major psych issues.

[capecodling]

I tend to think there's some mutual attraction in these situations. I tend to self-sacrifice for other people, and have more emotional awareness than most guys, so I can see how I and a woman with BPD, swimming in emotions, can be drawn to each other. And, as has already been noted, people who grew up in dysfunctional families will often tolerate behaviors in a prospctive partner that would cause a healthy person to run away. Incidentally, I'm determined to break my pattern of dating people with major psych issues.

While I noticed that I still do attract a lot of women with BPD or BPD tendencies, I've noticed that once you've really studied what BPD is all about you can spot them a lot earlier and it is much harder for them to trap you.   I've had a few dates with women like this, one by her own admission said she thought she had many BPD tendencies.   When you know what to look for and you spot the love bombing, future faking, hot-cold, push-pull your defenses will go up a lot sooner and you'll be aware of why you're having a stronger-than-expected emotional reaction to the person.   I've caught a few of them and was able to get space away from those women before they could really sink their hooks into me.   I think that's one thing that definitely happens just from educating yourself about BPD.

[Augustine]

While I noticed that I still do attract a lot of women with BPD or BPD tendencies, I've noticed that once you've really studied what BPD is all about you can spot them a lot earlier and it is much harder for them to trap you.   I've had a few dates with women like this, one by her own admission said she thought she had many BPD tendencies.   When you know what to look for and you spot the love bombing, future faking, hot-cold, push-pull your defenses will go up a lot sooner and you'll be aware of why you're having a stronger-than-expected emotional reaction to the person.   I've caught a few of them and was able to get space away from those women before they could really sink their hooks into me.   I think that's one thing that definitely happens just from educating yourself about BPD.

As it’s now been 3-weeks and 3-days since you started this thread, how are you fairing today?

Do you still ruminate over the memories of your former life, and do they still have the same emotional intensity?

These women you’ve been encountering, where do you initially meet them?

For me, the memories are like the far-off rumbling in the mountains after a storm has long since passed.

A very curious element is the sudden appearance of memories of peculiar behaviour that occurred many years ago in the relationship, and that I seemed to have deliberately repudiated at the time.

I’ll be going about my day, normally, with my former life the furthest thing from my mind, when a memory of some very odd behaviour that occurred half a decade ago will pop into my brain.  Psychogenic amnesia/dissociative amnesia precipitated by psychological stress. It has emerged that I actively suppressed most of her incongruous behaviour that occurred within the first few years. Either that, or the interval between the erratic behaviour was so large as to deem the behaviour irrelevant.

I admire your ability to communicate with women in this way, as I’m more inclined to recoil in terror, and burst into tears, the moment one is within a 100m of me.

The idea of dating again is completely foreign to my understanding, and those dating sites and apps, are a study in dysfunctional adults, and are leaden with frantic borderlines looking for their next hit. I can just picture them dripping in sweat looking at my profile, committing everything written to memory, and losing sleep…long before we’ve even communicated.

So, the mother of all revelations occurred the other week. Now that I’m back on terra firma again, with my disordered ex 6000km away on the east coast, I’ve been spending more time with my parents, as they’re both quite long in the tooth. They’re right at that tipping point now, so I prize my time with them.

They’re familiar with my story many times over, and their support has been foundational.

However, my mother confided to me-in private-that she, too, had to ignore a certain egregious behaviour of my stepfather’s in order to sustain her marriage.

I’m beginning to come around to the opinion that relationships wouldn’t be possible without dissembling, delusions, and denial in some form or another.

[once removed]

spot them a lot earlier
...
much harder for them to trap you. 
...
spot the love bombing, future faking, hot-cold, push-pull your defenses will go up a lot sooner
...
before they could really sink their hooks into me. 

im not sure that this is going to serve you very well.

for starters, how many here said they "saw the red flags", and pursued the relationship anyway? how many here go onto very similar relationships once, twice, even three more times? most of these things are not things you would spot on a first date, anyway.

now, im a heterosexual male. i have spent my entire life not dating men. i know how to spot them. i know what to avoid. that knowledge has never brought me any closer to finding my ideal partner, or becoming an ideal partner. it hasnt prevented homosexual men from being attracted to me, either.

a member here once compared dating to picking fruit. youre not going to get very far by looking for what to avoid. you master the dating world by knowing how to pick "good fruit", and by being a mate that can attract it. with confidence.

dating by "what to avoid", is, ultimately, dating by fear. after all, how is one supposed to date with any confidence if there are people trying to "sink their hooks" into you? that sounds terrifying.

and there are a lot of wounded, terrified, emotionally unavailable people in the dating pool, carrying a lot of baggage. approach dating in this fashion, and that is who you will connect with.

people with bpd arent (generally) a danger to you. they dont have special powers. they arent trying to trap you. but some of them may try to date you. men may try to date you too! and everyone who does will use some form of what is ultimately part of a mating ritual to try to attract you. whether or not it works, and to the extent it works, has nothing to do with who you are attracting, and everything to do with who and what you are attracted to. 

if you know who you are/who you want to be, focus on what you want in a relationship and how to offer it, you will naturally filter out what you dont want, and gravitate toward what you do.

[capecodling]

As it’s now been 3-weeks and 3-days since you started this thread, how are you fairing today?

Do you still ruminate over the memories of your former life, and do they still have the same emotional intensity?

These women you’ve been encountering, where do you initially meet them?

For me, the memories are like the far-off rumbling in the mountains after a storm has long since passed.

A very curious element is the sudden appearance of memories of peculiar behaviour that occurred many years ago in the relationship, and that I seemed to have deliberately repudiated at the time.

To answer your questions:

The ruinations have been getting slowly better, but they keep coming up every day.  I am around 4 months out now, was going to post an update about this.  I’m sort of surprised that I am still ruminating, and there is definitely still some emotional charge behind the ruminations, they haven’t reached the point of neutrality where they have no emotional charge and they are certainly not pleasant.  They are still unpleasant memories with negative feelings attached, when they come up I try to feel the pain fully and the. do some EFT tapping (faster EFT method) to integrate some of the more painful memories.  At the current rate of improvement it feels like it will be a year or so before the pain is all the way down to zero, but my previous BPD breakups took 2 years to reach that point.

As for dating again, I don’t use any dating apps, I just meet women in person so I can’t really speak to the experience online, but I can say it can be pretty triggering when you come across women who resemble your ex.   I think I’m in a place where I certainly don’t want to spend the rest of my life single, but if I did, I’d still be reasonably happy.  Its not a bad place to be actually.  I spent most of my life in long term relationships or pursuing them because I thought I *needed* a relationship to be complete and happy.  Now I realize i’m actually far better off single than I would be in a relationship that was just bad or mediocre.  I think a lot of us end up in BPD relationships because we haven’t internalized beliefs like this which give us some of our power back.

I think those sudden appearances of memories you talked about are a way for our body and mind to integrate some of the memories — some traumatic others not.  I actually think ruminations are about this two, so if you gently help along the process the body and mind can eventually heal.  But that process sometimes needs a nudge from things like: EFT tapping, trauma therapy, good sleep, TRE, psychadelics, daily exercise, meeting new people, dating, etc — not saying do all those things, i’m saying have as many tools in your toolbox as possible and find the ones that help yoir healing process.

[capecodling]

if you know who you are/who you want to be, focus on what you want in a relationship and how to offer it, you will naturally filter out what you dont want, and gravitate toward what you do.

I agree with so much of what you said here. I think it is very easy for many of us to get stuck in the “not BPD, anything, but BPD” mentality, when in fact, we would be better served by focusing on what we want as opposed to what we don’t want.

I think it’s still important to be aware of red flags and unhealthy traits, to continue your metaphor of picking apples. This would be like looking out for apples with signs of worms in them: once you’ve been burnt a bunch of times by a BPD, you know what some of the signs are to look out for, and you can simply steer clear of the next time, as opposed to making the damage received from the BPD part of your identity.

If you internalize it too much and make it part of your ego, then I think you will be much more likely to continue repeating the same types of experiences.

[Augustine]

To answer your questions:

The ruinations have been getting slowly better, but they keep coming up every day.  I am around 4 months out now, was going to post an update about this.  I’m sort of surprised that I am still ruminating, and there is definitely still some emotional charge behind the ruminations, they haven’t reached the point of neutrality where they have no emotional charge and they are certainly not pleasant.  They are still unpleasant memories with negative feelings attached, when they come up I try to feel the pain fully and the. do some EFT tapping (faster EFT method) to integrate some of the more painful memories.  At the current rate of improvement it feels like it will be a year or so before the pain is all the way down to zero, but my previous BPD breakups took 2 years to reach that point.

As for dating again, I don’t use any dating apps, I just meet women in person so I can’t really speak to the experience online, but I can say it can be pretty triggering when you come across women who resemble your ex.   I think I’m in a place where I certainly don’t want to spend the rest of my life single, but if I did, I’d still be reasonably happy.  Its not a bad place to be actually.  I spent most of my life in long term relationships or pursuing them because I thought I *needed* a relationship to be complete and happy.  Now I realize i’m actually far better off single than I would be in a relationship that was just bad or mediocre.  I think a lot of us end up in BPD relationships because we haven’t internalized beliefs like this which give us some of our power back.

I think those sudden appearances of memories you talked about are a way for our body and mind to integrate some of the memories — some traumatic others not.  I actually think ruminations are about this two, so if you gently help along the process the body and mind can eventually heal.  But that process sometimes needs a nudge from things like: EFT tapping, trauma therapy, good sleep, TRE, psychadelics, daily exercise, meeting new people, dating, etc — not saying do all those things, i’m saying have as many tools in your toolbox as possible and find the ones that help yoir healing process.

May I ask, are your rumination’s connected to isolated negative events, or are they a product of random and independent summations of positive memories?

I was able to be dispassionate when I recognized the interchangeability of the disorder, viz., even Saint Assisi would have been subject to identical borderline behaviours, as the motivation was never personalized.


Regrettably, coupling is a biological imperative, so the need can never be scorched from our drives, and it never delivers on its promises.

Unfortunately, I’m equally as dispassionate about introducing someone into my life again, as you.  Once the passion and intimacy inevitably fades, all you’re  left with is companionate love.

 What you are left with is someone who is just there, as Rilke suggests,  “I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people: that each should stand guard over the solitude of the other.”

Perhaps this is just my personal prejudice, and my naïveté,  but I just assumed that life would be different, again, borrowing from Rilke, “ It does not occur to anyone to expect a single person to be ‘happy’ -but if he marries, people are much suprised if he isn’t.”

[capecodling]

May I ask, are your rumination’s connected to isolated negative events, or are they a product of random and independent summations of positive memories?

Well when it comes to BPD relationships I’m not sure there is a difference between negative vs positive memories as even the moments of blissful high, there’s something in you that senses something is wrong even in those moments and those memories are tainted also.

I’ve been doing a lot of therapy, EFT, and psychedelic therapy to integrate those memories, and also I haven’t checked up on social media or photos.  Its really odd, I keep cycling on this photo I saw of her — I saw it back when we were together — it was a picture of her when she was maybe 5 years younger and she was out on a hike somewhere and looked happy. 

I can’t begin to tell you why, but that photo plays over and over and over.  Many other memories I had with her have faded.  Even some of our most passionate moments together don’t have much emotional charge anymore..  I even sometimes have trouble remembering exactly what she looks like.  But the smile she had in that one photo still does haunt me sometimes and I haven’t looked at that photo since before she and I broke up.

Perhaps when I saw the photo she and I had just had a fight or unnatural high or something that had made me feel very emotional and those emotions got paired with the photo?

[Pensive1]

even the moments of blissful high, there’s something in you that senses something is wrong even in those moments

I know that, in the initial blissed out months of my relationship with my ex, I sensed something was quite wrong in her repetitive embittered telling of victimization stories. It really bothered me. She actually had been badly victimized in her life, but there was something very odd about the nature/magnitude of her resentment and her sense of helpless trappedness. It reminded me of my mother, who I knew had BPD. Oddly enough, I didn't consciously recognize that my ex had BPD until a therapist pointed it out. Now I ask myself how I could have been so blind as to not recognize it, because she's such a classic pwBPD.

In the initial idealization period, it felt like a rocket ship. Though across the subsequent years, there were some points (albeit limited) where she and I were apparently happy in a normal way, without the sense that something was wrong.

[Cat Familiar]

Well when it comes to BPD relationships I’m not sure there is a difference between negative vs positive memories as even the moments of blissful high, there’s something in you that senses something is wrong even in those moments and those memories are tainted also.

Like you, I’ve been reminiscing on the history of the relationship with my husband. Unlike you, we are still together, but nearly a year ago, he had a disabling stroke.

As I look back on those memories, even in the best of times, there was a niggling little internal voice that I ignored, that told me things were not as they appeared. Sometimes that voice even shouted, causing me physical discomfort, and even then, though I did recognize and hear its message, I still resolutely went on, disbelieving what it was telling me.

Reexamining our history is a spiritual tradition that is spoken of in other cultures and is a valuable exercise. I was gobsmacked when I realized how frequently I was receiving internal warning signs  that I went ahead and ignored. So many of us on this forum are very rational analytical thinkers—who somehow have attracted hyper emotional people into their orbit. The lesson I’ve learned is to pay more attention to my intuition.

[SinisterComplex]

Like you, I’ve been reminiscing on the history of the relationship with my husband. Unlike you, we are still together, but nearly a year ago, he had a disabling stroke.

As I look back on those memories, even in the best of times, there was a niggling little internal voice that I ignored, that told me things were not as they appeared. Sometimes that voice even shouted, causing me physical discomfort, and even then, though I did recognize and hear its message, I still resolutely went on, disbelieving what it was telling me.

Reexamining our history is a spiritual tradition that is spoken of in other cultures and is a valuable exercise. I was gobsmacked when I realized how frequently I was receiving internal warning signs  that I went ahead and ignored. So many of us on this forum are very rational analytical thinkers—who somehow have attracted hyper emotional people into their orbit. The lesson I’ve learned is to pay more attention to my intuition.

To add onto my dear friend Cat and fellow partner in crime here...paying attention to your instincts and intuition I have preached here for years now. If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, well then it is a F duck!

Never lose sight of how you feel internally. If the energy feels off or you are not vibing with something do not dismiss it, but instead take the time to embrace it so you can protect your own heart and your own mental health.

Cheers and Best Wishes!

-SC-

[Augustine]

Well when it comes to BPD relationships I’m not sure there is a difference between negative vs positive memories as even the moments of blissful high, there’s something in you that senses something is wrong even in those moments and those memories are tainted also.

I’ve been doing a lot of therapy, EFT, and psychedelic therapy to integrate those memories, and also I haven’t checked up on social media or photos.  Its really odd, I keep cycling on this photo I saw of her — I saw it back when we were together — it was a picture of her when she was maybe 5 years younger and she was out on a hike somewhere and looked happy.  

I can’t begin to tell you why, but that photo plays over and over and over.  Many other memories I had with her have faded.  Even some of our most passionate moments together don’t have much emotional charge anymore..  I even sometimes have trouble remembering exactly what she looks like.  But the smile she had in that one photo still does haunt me sometimes and I haven’t looked at that photo since before she and I broke up.

Perhaps when I saw the photo she and I had just had a fight or unnatural high or something that had made me feel very emotional and those emotions got paired with the photo?

I do understand, even if the translation of the feeling is beyond my meagre capabilities.

I carry a couple of mental images of old photographs, and in them she’s beaming at me contentedly. They’re like photographs of an apparition to me now.

The closest rough approximation is Hartley’s, “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” But it still doesn’t fully encapsulate the feeling tone.

However, mine was the exception to the rule, as her pathology was largely subclinical/inwardly directed until the final two years, so the spectre of the memory dissipated a while ago…thank God.

The tallest hurdle for me was acknowledging that the real person isn’t being intermittently occluded by a severe health condition-like someone suffering through a sporadic epileptic seizure-but that they are completely inseparable from the disorder.

I’m intrigued by all the comments here, as they are common parlance: We were all sceptical of that inner voice.

Psychogenic amnesia, willful ignorance, or something more?

I have recently read of the link between attachment processes, and dissociative psychopathology:

“Once the attachment system is activated, the internal working model is identified as a guide to the formation of both the attachment behavior and the appraisal of attachment emotions in self and others.”
 
Since we’ve all made a point of suppressing that inner voice of ours…

The odd thing about my inner voice is that it has no difficulty separating the wheat from the chaff, interpersonally, because I can smell a turd even if it is on the other side of the globe.

However unless a romantic interest is obviously emotionally like a Hydra, all of their foibles that I need to examine with the precision of an electron microscope completely escape my notice.

[Pensive1]

We were all sceptical of that inner voice.

That seems so true. I'm a scientist, so am prone to skepticism and questioning myself in general (which often allows me to be a better scientist). But the degree of self-questioning around my ex is at another level. I think I so much want agreement between us, a communion of minds, and to view her positively, that even now, when we spend time together I can find my perspective getting distorted. She denies the severity of her BPD pathology (she's in quite substantial denial that she has BPD at all) and denies that her new guy is NPD. And I find myself thinking maybe I'm wrong. Then when I'm no longer in her presence, I begin to see clearly again - recognize that by all objective measures that her BPD is cripplingly severe and that her new guy is blazingly NPD. My best friend (who is also a scientist) is mystified to see me repeatedly question myself as to whether my ex's new guy has NPD because it's so incredibly obvious - yet I keep engaging in these cycles of wondering whether I'm wrong because my ex denies it.

[Augustine]

I know that, in the initial blissed out months of my relationship with my ex, I sensed something was quite wrong in her repetitive embittered telling of victimization stories. It really bothered me. She actually had been badly victimized in her life, but there was something very odd about the nature/magnitude of her resentment and her sense of helpless trappedness. It reminded me of my mother, who I knew had BPD. Oddly enough, I didn't consciously recognize that my ex had BPD until a therapist pointed it out. Now I ask myself how I could have been so blind as to not recognize it, because she's such a classic pwBPD.

In the initial idealization period, it felt like a rocket ship. Though across the subsequent years, there were some points (albeit limited) where she and I were apparently happy in a normal way, without the sense that something was wrong.

I ask myself the same question regarding the anger etiology, and attribute my compliance to a normalcy bias.

As I’ve mentioned in the past, hers was so infrequent for most of our relationship that it could be attributed to anything other than a disorder when it did appear, so it seemed inconsequential. 

However, when it did manifest, it was like a random flash of spectacular lightning, completely out of the blue, and gone just as quickly.

It wasn’t until many years later that her rumination’s over past real and/or perceived transgressions started occurring.

What amazed me was that the intensity of the anger was entirely independent of the date when the reputed transgressions occurred!

I was in a frame of mind, at that point, to be making tracks, as incorporating all that insanity was impossible. 

Much has been made of trauma bonding but I wonder how much of our attachment in these instances is just a product of normalcy bias, and oxytocin just immuring us into these disharmonious circumstances?

[Cat Familiar]

Like many in this thread, things seemed “normal-ish” at the outset of the relationship. I overlooked issues that I thought were merely a product of a different style of upbringing. We agreed on the “big ticket” issues, our values were aligned, we had some shared interests, but a lot of very different interests (most of which the other never adopted as a hobby). Opposites attract, then what?

Upon dawning disagreements after becoming a committed couple, I chalked up to “we’re different people.” Then some really weird behaviors surfaced during a very vanilla conflict. (“What the heck, I thought. This seems like a really stupid thing for such an intelligent person to get wrapped around the axle.) But then, of course I jumped into the thick of things, once accused of having ill intentions, being manipulative or thoughtless or unkind or ____________ (fill in the blank). As I defended myself, the anger escalated, stupid things were said on both sides.

Then when I had cooled down, I was left to wonder WTF was my husband’s extreme weird thinking/behavior all about. It didn’t seem to me that any rational person would ever respond like that.

The first odd situation I noticed happened we hadn’t been together long. He wanted me to meet his family on the other coast. His mother was elderly, his dad was a malignant narcissist (I had discounted some of the stories I’d heard about him—until I saw it before my eyes), his sisters seemed accomplished, involved mothers of adolescents and teenagers, very bright like their brother. Much later I learned my husband has had a long term emotional wound about his sisters (I had no clue). He feels like he “isn’t part of the family,” or that his sisters don’t think he’s “real” because he doesn’t have children.

Back to the initial meeting of his family: as we are lying in bed in his sister’s house, he started complaining that his sisters don’t have any interest in him, don’t want to keep in touch, etc. I was thinking that we’d had a great evening with the two of them and had no idea what he was talking about, since one of them had invited us to stay with her. So I said, “Well, they’re just busy moms” and that started our first World War. (Who the f* would have guessed? Not me!)

Rinse and repeat, and I muddled through a tremendous amount of confusion. That someone so intelligent, so competent, so articulate, so well educated, would ever go down a rabbit hole in which logic and expectations required to be held by someone with a law degree working in a government job as an attorney—had absolutely no currency.

[TelHill]

I usually post on the family board. (My mother is the pwBPD.) This topic is something I've grappled with as I had a long term marriage to a man who had a PD. Am a few years divorced from him.

I don't know if what I think will help someone. I fear probable rejection from friends and romantic partners. I felt so uncomfortable it felt like I was going to die. (I still feel this way but I can handle it much better.)

My self-esteem was very low due to a mother who rejected and abused me.  I had a tendency to accept a person who love bombed me. I felt someone who didn't pursue me with a fervor would eventually drop me. I self-sabotaged or dropped them first.

My ex-h  pursued me feverishly and I thought he must really like me.  It felt easy and safe.   It felt comfortable so I went ahead.  I saw little quirks but explained them away.  The mask dropped after the wedding and it was a total nightmare.

I have taken my time getting to know people and don't rush into anything. Have said no many times due to small red flags I've seen. If no one is on the radar for a long time, I accept it. I don't take it personallyy. Nothing is worse than a partner with a PD.

I sincerely wish we all find good partners who cherish and treat us well!