Ask the Therapist
Ex-girlfriend with Possible BPD
I am a 34 year old Dutch guy. I was living together with my girl-friend (she is 21 years old) till half of March. Within our relationship, she always told me that I was the man of her life and we were about to get married next year. Till March 10th she told me that I was the man of her life and with 3 days she completely changed her feeling to I don't love you anymore. The result was she left me and since than hardly any contact is possible. The weeks after I was looking for answers and started reading her letters again and I also started thinking about what she told me about her past. I also found a letter from a metal health institution she was in for suicidal behaviour. In that letter she was advised to get help after she left there, but she never went. Just a few things about her.
1. Her parents are divorced and she hates her real father.
2. She has a eating disorder
3. She has enormous mood swings. From one moment to the other she could be a in a completely different mood with for no reason.
4. She is extremely black and white. At the moment I am nothing to her she told me while I was the man of her life a little more than a month ago
5. I discovered scars on her arms. So she automutilates. (She did that before she got to know me)
6. She has a very low self esteem and negative self image and she wants to do everything in her life (than this, than that)
7. She suffered from dissociation during our relationship. One time she told me to get things at the supermarket and when she arrived there she didn't know what to get.
8. She is always thinking about suicide.
This is just a brief list about what I have experienced. I told her that I suspected BPD with her and that I could not help her but that she needed to get help. I also told her that her behaviour was way over my limits and that if she kept acting like this I didn't want to see her anymore. Three weeks ago she told me that she didn't want to get help. At the moment she works a lot and telling other people that her feelings for me changed during our relationship,
although she told me March 10th that I was the man of her life. Furthermore, she is getting into the Gothic style of living again, the same thing she did before she had to go to the Mental Health institution (last time she stayed there for one week). I would not be surprised if she gets into a new relationship at the moment. At the moment I don't know what to do anymore. I really love her and I want us to get back together. I got in contact with someone who knows a lot about BPD and she told me to send her a card every once in a while and that I should do anything that is a potential
threat to her ( e.g. talking about our relationship and that I miss her). She also told me that she knows how to find me and that I should create an environment where she can come back without loosing her dignity. She also advised me to order the book
Stop
Walking on Eggshells: Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Care About Has
Borderline Personality Disorder by Paul T.
Mason, Randi Kreger. I have already ordered this book.
What should I do in order to have a chance to get back together? Should I follow the advise of the lady? What can I do else to get in contact with her or at least create an opening for further contact? Is it possible that her point of view at the moment changes back to the man of her life I was to her?
I really don't know what to do anymore.
One of the central features of the borderline personality is the tendency to see things as black or white, with no middle ground. With regard to people and relationships that generally translates into deification and vilification -- you are, in their eyes, either god or the devil and there is no predictability to it. In addition to that, late adolescent females (21) are, as rule, fairly erratic emotionally. So you've got yourself a nice little cocktail.
The real focus for you should be how you feel and what you are doing in response to your ex-girlfriend's behavior. Being in relationship to a borderline is a profound stress on one's sense of self and general sense of sanity. They trigger in us a defensiveness, an
obsessiveness and morbid need to "fix things" that we would in general not otherwise show. Although there is no "official" name for this and I am certain it has never been addressed in the literature, I like to call it the "interpersonal borderline dynamic" because I have seen it manifest so many times.
That said, before you start looking for ways to get back into this relationship, you might want to think about if you really want to be in the relationship and why. Life with a borderline or someone who manifests borderline features can be quite literally hell. You spend more time in relation to the relationship than in relation to the person because there is always a crisis or a lull before a crisis or a calm after a crisis, but there is always a crisis. You will likely not get your needs met, even if you happen to be god that day, and those invisible triggers will always be there. Choose wisely.
