Can i have some experiences of dating someone with BPD please?

[SleepyDopeyGrumpy]

Ive just started seeing somebody with BPD and other related illnesses and just want some honest advice and experiences really as there has already been some major issues regarding sexual impulsiveness and fear of loneliness that resulted in him sleeping with somebody else in the same weekend as myself before we officially became exclusive and it hurt quite a lot.

I really like him but i need to know if im strong enough to cope with what may come and would like some honest feedback on what its like to deal with this kind of thing and sort some of the myths from reality.

Bump

What's BPD?

Borderline Personality disorder

BPD can make relationships very challenging. Extreme insecurity can make faithfulness/exclusivity hard.

I would suggest that you get some advice from an organisation like Mind.

You are clearly going into this with your eyes open and that is good.

Does your dp receive any support? Has he had treatment such as Dialectic Behavioural Therapy?

I think it depends where they are in their treatment and how badly their BPD effects them (and then you). If he's that impulsive that he's sleeping with other people in the same weekend as you, I'm not sure I'd be willing to pursue anything.

Hi, I do not know if I can help. Maybe I can.

I have BPD. I have had the dx since I was 17 and am now 23. I am living with my partner and engaged since Christmas. I know my behavior is hard to handle. I met my DP while we were both at Uni & were very close friends before we were together. Things are difficult. But BPD varies from patient to patient, I do understand the loneliness you describe, and while I have never cheated on my DP..my fear of abandonment is an on going issue in our relationship. I do not know if this is the sort of reply you are looking for. (I am new to MN, & I am slightly scared of standing up and being 'counted' as a BPDer)

If you have questions you think I can help with fell free to ask and I will try to reply. But I do better with direct questions than giving opinions (the 'I do not have an opinion' to stick to feelings..a common bpd thing I am told ) )

Oh, and my DP is reading "Loving Someone with Borderline Personality Disorder: How to Keep Out-of-Control Emotions from Destroying Your Relationship" By Shari. Y. Manning at the moment & he says it is helping him.

A lot of people say BPD'ers are attention seeking angry and horrible to be around. So there is so much shame in admitting it. There are a lot of myths. It is nice to see that you care about this guy enough to look in to the subject.

I hope this helps some.

*feel not fell. & I do agree with Grockle about the sleeping-in-the-same-weekend thing.

He has had therapy alongside medication im not sure if it is what you said but i recall him saying he had. He was diagnosed as a teenager and is 22 now.

His is not my DP as it is major early days hence why im looking for advice, I would like him to be but im not prepared to put up with sexual promiscuity and need to find out if it really is the Bpd or whether it is being used as an excuse. I want to believe him that it will not happen again as he was not tied to me when he did it we had only just met and started hanging out.

The problem i have is im walking on eggshells trying to put my point across that i have no trust in him yet but i do want to and that i wont be walked over without triggering him off and making him think im not interested in him.

Sorry if i take my time replying my net keeps dropping out but im checkign whenever it comes back up!

Regarding the weekend thing he swore he had not done it before and had never done one night stands before. He got with this women and she attached herself to him and he said he was too ashamed to set her straight. Its not actually the sleeping with her that was the problem as like i said we were not exclusive at that stage it was the lying to cover it up.

I agreed to put all of this behind us and start fresh but im so scared that it is something that will just keep happening with him getting better at hiding it, a lot of the sites ive been on to look up Bpd say that promiscuity is a problem.

Twitch thank you for your input and dont worry so much ive been on MN for years now and they are a friendly if straight talking bunch :-)

If i could ask you, you have never cheated but do you get the urge to? Is it something that is a problem but you control it or is it something that never crosses your mind?

Well done posting this Twitchrabbitbouncebounce (I just had to write that out loud ). You have no reason to be ashamed. You did not ask for BPD.

Honestly, if it's such early days, I'm surprised he's mentioned it. And used it as an excuse to sleep with someone else.

IME (and I have personal experience of this), people coping well with BPD try very hard to function as 'normally' as possible and don't mentioned having BPD to many people. Like twitch said, there's a lot of shame in having BPD and it's not something easily discussed, especially at the start of a relationship.

Maybe read up on it and see what you think.

And yes, thank you for posting so openly twitch.

We met online and spent a lot of time talking openly and honestly and he felt he had to warn me before i met him so i could decide whether or not to go ahead and meet him. He self harms which i would have noticed if not mentioned and he also has this other thing i cant remember the name in which he acts out his dreams with shouting and jumping and such in his sleep so warned me before hand so i wouldn't freak out when i stayed over.

He does have the shame that seems to be common but he also likes to put everything upfront so that he is not rejected later on in the relationship.
Grockle do you think that he is using the Bpd as an excuse or could it genuinely have lead to or at least contributed to the incident (i wont call it cheating or two timing because as i said we were not exclusive) When i questioned him on the fact that if he needed intimate company so desperately why not come to me he responded with the fact that he did not want to constantly bugging me so soon and scare me off.

I don't know sleepy, but I'd just be wary. He said he didn't want to scare you off but was happy to sleep with someone else, whilst being interested in you. And if he's currently self-harming, I'd say he's not very stable.

He is due for a hospital stay and a change of medicine next month which will help control his impulsiveness and hopefully settle him down again. He recently moved to a whole new area, changed jobs and got used to living on his own after a very long relationship that broken down So he is trying to get a hold on things but i imagine all of this has upset the balance quite a bit.

God i sound like im making excuses for him dont i? Im just trying to give a full picture that i know of to the best of my ability and show that im trying to understand but needing to talk so i can differentiate between genuine problems and what could be manipulative behaviour so i can make a fully informed decision because i really do like this boy and i just wish it was simple :-S

I know everyone is different but a friend of mine had a relationship with someone with BPD which has been a nightmare. This person got jealous, accessed phone numbers and email addresses without permission and bombarded friends and family with agitated and inappropriate messages. There has been violence, threats and police involvement.

My understanding of BPD is very limited but I believe it is a condition of extreme feelings and behaviour

I would be very wary if there are issues this early in a relationship

If he needs a hospital stay then why is he looking for a relationship? I think he needs to get better & be more stable before trying to build a relationship with anyone. He needs to have a good sense of who he is, by himself. It sounds as though he's still dealing with the end of his last relationship (do you know why that broke down?)

I think the difficulty is that manipulative behaviour can be a genuine problem - if he IS being manipulative, he might well not be doing it deliberately. Either way, it is a problem.

I'm not saying people with BPD are bad & that relationships can't work (I know they can) but I think his current situation is not an ideal one and not a good place to start a relationship from.

Sorry - I always want to be supportive and helpful with issues re BPD but I just don't think this sounds good.

*Twitch thank you for your input and dont worry so much ive been on MN for years now and they are a friendly if straight talking bunch :-)

If i could ask you, you have never cheated but do you get the urge to? Is it something that is a problem but you control it or is it something that never crosses your mind?*

Thank you sleepy for the reassurance. (and sorry for the gap in reply, my DSis called :) )

As to your question. When we were first together we were at Uni, as I mentioned..and so out a lot. Most night, lots of drinking..and alchol is def a trigger for me in terms of promiscuity.

I did find myself very much intoxicated by the attention of other guys, and, if I am honesy, girls. Anyone. It is just the idea that someone things I am attractive/worth thier times iyswim. Intoxicated is the right word. It compleatly (sp?) blinds me and I stop thinking properly, it is like my world shrinks so that only me and this one other person exists. I do not/cannot think of anyone else (this is also true of friendships.) My DP has always been far far too lovely to me. He would see this happening and divert me. It did not always work & I would be horrible..pushing him away, trying to wriggle out of time with him to talk to this other person. Then it would get to the point where guy X would think I was 'up for it' and try kiss me or whatever and I totally freak out. I literally do not see it coming and then I get scared. As you can imagine this has often got me into less than ideal situations, but at the time I do not really know what I am doing.

It does/did happen without the influence of alcohol too.

Know...DP and I moved from that town to a much more rural area. I had a bit of a 'wobble' and for the last year I have been pretty much agoraphobic. I have no social life, friends, do not go out, am socially anxious etc. So that situation does not arise any more. but I am terrified of DP realizing I am horrible/stupid/fat and leaving me. I accuse him all the time. I am anxious when he goes to work. I know he loves me (strange man) but I cannot convince myself of it. One minute I will be fine and the next minute I will be horrible to him to try 'prove' to him that he should leave me. I push his limits..& he doesn't react. It is a horrible cycle. In my head I sometimes imagine cheating on him to prove to him I am shit on his shoe...because I am so scared he will leave me.

At times I know how unproductive, horrible, unfair and manipulative this behavior is..but when the feelings wash over me it is like... Jekyll and Hyde I guess.

I hope I am explaining this properly. I love him too bits, I really do..and it is that attraction, the bond that has always scared me. I know it all sounds so illogical, it is. and if this was in relationships, not mh, and DP was describing my behavior he would be told to 'leave that bastard' !!! I know I am horrible. and I am trying so hard to get better. I have done DBT twice, and am now In gentle psychotherapy and have lots of therapy going on. If i was not trying to help myself I know there would be no hope for us. He loves me..despite my BPD & that is what matters. If the guy you are interested in is trying to help himself he can overcome this behavior, but it is so hard. I guess he feels ashamed, hates himself & does not really know why he acts how he does. I do not know why I act the way I do really..at the time. I am a really trying to recover (if it is possible to recover from a PD) but that does not mean I can control my behavior when emotions are rife. Hindsight is a bitch.

I hope this helps & feel free to ask more questions.
(sorry for the bollocks grammar, despite a 1st class english degree comma's still elude me. Pesky little fuckers!)

The hospital stay is just because he has to come off of a medicine he is taking to start this new one and there can apparently be problems with the withdrawal and it needs to be monitored.

I think he is quite stable normally he has a demanding job and copes very well apart from the impulsiveness (which the new medication will help with) and the occasional self harming when he is triggered which he was when his ex sent him some horrible messages not to long ago. Because of the move to a new area of the country he had gone without access to his GP and health centres that he preciously had and also came off his meds for a little while because he could not find someone that could prescribe them until the new GP was sorted and his files were there.

Im not to sure why the relationship broke down but they had been together for quite a while and the other half had decided that she wanted to change her life and that didnt include him.

He wasnt exactly looking for a relationship and like i said we are not officially together it just kind of sprang up and i feel really strongly about him. The hard thing is that i know it will be difficult and i know this blip has made trust an issue but i truely feel we could have something amazing and i dont want to pass up on the chance just because of the disorder.

In regards to hospital/self harming..for me - that is a 'stable' in my life. Even when I am functioning well I self harm & often require hospitalization to tweak medication & so on. For me, it is part of my life..and so part of the life of whomever chooses to share it with me. However, I know some BPDer's that never require IP treatment and their self harming behavior is very infrequent. If it is the norm for him it may be something that would need to be accepted (hard, I know). If not, then I agree with Grockle that it indicates he is in crisis.

I think it is a good sign you have been speaking a lot online. I am quite upfront with certain people, almost in a 'bolshie' way..'take me or leave me, i dare you' and it comes back to the fear that everyone will leave me.

There is an opinion among BPD therapists that there are two types of BPD - the aggressive, possibly abusive type who refuse to acknowledge any issues and will be very destructive towards others. Then 'my' type who tend to inwardly collapse and blame themselves for everything more than other people, likely to spend a long time in therapy, self harming etc. I think this may explain somewhat why some people meet people with BPD whose behavior scars them as it is so horrific and un-copeable with. I would guess that this is that case with Tranq's relationship, although of course it is just a guess. Romantic involvement usually lasts longer with the second 'type' but it still a hard slog. And of course you can get an overlap between the two types.

Maybe you could stay close friends for longer before going in for a romatic relationship?

romantic. silly spelling.

Grockle - may I ask..you seem to know a lot about BPD and are sympathetic towards it. Do you know somebody with it? A professional interest? (obvs. you do not need to answer. I am curious)

Thank you twitch all of that sounds a lot like the way he has described to me he feels and why he did what he did. I hope you manage to get a firm handle on things and if it helps while doing my research i have discovered that after therapy and meds a lot of BPD sufferers years later cant actually fall under the diagnosis conditions so there is significant research that suggests it can be beaten with the right combination on help!

It can, sleepy. But bear in mind it will always be there. I think even if you have 'recovered' from BPD, those tendencies will still be part of you and when things become stressful, they can become problematic. People who do well with BPD learn to recognise and manage their feelings & be mindful of destructive behaviours & when things are ok, it is all fine. But when something stressful or unexpected happens, even years down the line, the difficulties can arise again.

It's lovely that you are trying to find out more about this and are supportive of this man. Just make sure you keep your eyes open and look after yourself as well.

Will PM you, twitch

Thank you Grockle i agree with watching out for myself hence why i started this thread. I myself have suffered from depression which required medication and self harmed when younger and had an eating disorder and have taken a long time to get to this stage in life where i am confident i can cope with things on my own without medical help.

I kind of feel like i sympathise a tiny bit with this condition, not because it is similar in anyway because im sure it is much much worse than what i had. but because i know how horrible is is to have something wrong with you that pushes people away and leads to a loss of control on life so im not completely without understanding of what it would take to deal with it in someone else. However i dont know if this is a help or a hindrerence iyswim?

The main thing to watch out for IMO is the idea that you understand him and therefore can change him. If you can be yourself in a relationship with him the way he is there is potential for happiness.