Anyone dated a girl with a borderline personality disorder?

No, I don't think it was crazy that she wanted to have sex. It was crazy how she reacted to me calmly saying "later babe"...she flipped because of that. It was disturbing. The entire rest of the night was bad just because she did not get what she wanted at that moment. I just find it strange. Maybe it wasn't that crazy. Who knows. I'm losing my mind thinking about past stuff now that you guys have opened my eyes.

I am only going to give you a few of my stories.

* The many many times I'd wake up to 15-20 missed calls + texts before 7:45am where she's insisting she needs to talk to me and subsequently break things off. The first time it legit hurt and I was confused but I started noticing a pattern. She just wanted me to sit there and beg for her not to go. By about the the sixth or seventh time this happened, I literally picked the phone up once and was like, "Hello?" Listening to her. "This sh*t again?" She goes, "I'm serious this time." "I'll talk to you later." Click and literally went back to sleep unfazed. I'd ignore her and she'd always come crawling back after a few hours. I'd sometimes continue ignoring her for days.

* Two hours before my last college final she decides she's going to go on one of her rampages and break up with me. Gee thanks! So I'm all messed up while trying to focus of the material, all I can think about during the exam is her abruptness and lack of concern for other things in my life. Like she couldn't have waited until that night? I even asked her that. "Sorry, bad timing." I decide to mentally close it off and forget about it. I then start thinking about beer and friends after and finish up this exam. I walk out of my exam and there she is. Because the class let out all at once (everyone had to wait) everyone sees it on my way out. She was just smiling and pretending nothing happened.

* At christmas we were at her relatives house way far away. I have ridden along with the immediate family. At dinner, she's a little intoxicated and grabs my phone when a text comes in from another girl. It was a mass text saying "Merry Christmas All!" She put me through the ringer right then and there, told me it was over. KEep in mind I am at her relatives house in the middle of nowhere with no way out. I am basically having a heart attack when I decide to walk outside for some fresh air. If there was ever a moment that I needed a cigarette that was it right then because I was in the middle of being traumatized and needed to chill the hell out. I was so wound up and hurting. Meanwhile she's inside getting drunk with her extended family. Then on the way home of course there's the drastic change of events in the back seat. She's cuddling, kissing and her drunk grabbing. As if the previous two hours hadn't happened at all.

* Free way incident mentioned earlier in this thread. Spitting, hitting, swearing, threatening suicide, opening the car door on the free way and just being a monster.

* Anyone ever heard of the BluffMyCall Android app? It's an app that allows you to mask your number to some other number of your choosing and call someone else making it appear to the receiving end that the call is coming from the chosen number. The girl I dated had it out for pretty blonde girls (she was a pretty brunette). She was convinced in her own mind that I was going to leave her for a "pretty blonde girl". So to test the waters, she'd look up various numbers of my facebook friends who fit the description and ghost call me from those numbers using the app. Even though sometimes I would have had no idea who the number calling was exactly, I recognized the area codes and would pick up. That's when I would get confronted and be in trouble for answering the phone even though I didn't have the number stored in my phone and had no idea who it was other than the possibility it was someone I knew. F-ed up because I wasn't the one straying ever. She was!

* Mean/sweet cycles that would become more frequent as time went along. Toward the end they were overlapping one other. There came a point where I had totally changed as a person. I was so consumed by my status with her and trying to get back to the honeymoon phase of our relationship that I had omitted everything else from my life. My heart ached from all the trauma. Little by little I had become so broken and consumed by her mood swings.

* I had never called a girl a c*nt before (or even a bitch). It is a dirty, disgusting word. But she pulled some shit one time and I was so angry that it just came out. Not to her face though. I said it completely sober to my friends. I still think it's an awful word of the english language and I haven't used it to describe anyone since. But what she did was so awful and cruel. Testament to me having done something I wouldn't normally do. She is a c*nt.

I remember when I was definitely at rock bottom with all this. And I decided that I wasn't going to put up with it anymore. I was at a gas station somewhere on a country road. She had been fighting with me over the phone. I had stopped to get a snack and a powerade. From that point forward when she got ugly and started throwing fits, I'd stop responding for the day. Cold turkey. Soon came a day where I saw the light bright and clear. I was still mentally cracked out and broken. I looked like shit and I felt like shit but I had had enough. I was still coming down from a recent fit of hers when another one started up again. That was it. Walked her to the park, talked to her until I couldn't say it any more clear. I had explained it was over probably 20+ times. She wouldn't stop. She wouldn't listen. She was going on and on and on at how fat and ugly I was (I'm not), how I couldn't make it without her, etc, etc etc. I finally started to walk away. She's walking behind me down the street begging stop-stop-stop-stop! I love you! I love you! Stop! Do you want me to hit you? By that time I was at my car door and chuckled, looked back and said, "And you wonder why this is happening?"

That was the last time I ever saw her in person. I'm glad.

I eventually received phone calls from the police and what not regarding belongings I was holding ransom apparently. You know, overnight tooth brush, a picture she gave me in a frame, a running t-shrt and a pair of underwear. You get the drift...

From personal experience I would say absolutely don't do it. A woman with BPD can quickly go from smart, affectionate and loving to the most hateful person you can imagine. They can be totally irrational and will have no recognition that their mental condition is affecting their behavior and insist you are the one with the problem. I guess casual dating is probably not too bad, but marriage should be out of the question. Sad, but true.

So you believe that being "seriously mentally ill" is "someone buckled down in a padded wheelchair drooling on themselves" & "one of those people". You're Gifted all right, and I don't mean in the good way.

Just want to say this is a great thread. Thank you for sharing, everyone. I have been lucky enough never to get tangled up with anyone like the girls described in this thread, probably because I have a pretty low threshold for crazy and would run like hell after offense #1. I have mental illness in my family though and have seen that people never (or VERY rarely) change. This whole thread has been very informative and helpful in knowing what to look for though, not to mention how therapeutic it probably was for you all to share your stories. I only had a vague idea of what BPD was before this thread. I now know I've seen a number of guys tangled up with crazy girls just like the ones you describe. One guy I know was pushed into a glass door, cut his arm all to hell and had to have surgery to sew the tendons back together. Girl said it was his fault for being an Ahole. This guy is a saint and bent over backwards trying to make it work with him. Geez. How terrible.

Let this thread be a lesson to all you guys reading it. Don't get mixed up with crazy, even if it involves great sex. In the end it's not worth it.

Sir Inmate,Psychopathy and sociopathy are definitely interchangable. However they are also known as those with "antisocial personality disorder" which is the official term:http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/antisocial-personality-disorder/basics/definition/con-20027920The thing is that personality disorders are indeed disorders, but unlike some other mental illnesses which are physical and chemical in nature such as schizophrenia, dementia, bipolar, etc. Personality disorders are for the most part developed in response to their environment (although there might be some genetic predisposition component). Show me a person with BPD who had a loving stable upbringing and I will sell you a bridge in Brooklyn.The #1 characteristic of BPD is that they feel a constant sense of abandonment and cannot cope. Their manipulations are build around making themselves feel wanted or lashing out when they perceive they are unwanted. The stories you see in this thread all describe behavior where as soon as the person with BPD is outright rejected they flip out because the game has failed.They do amazing things to cry for attention - whether it's sexual, hurting themselves, hurting others, manipulation - you name it.There is definitely some treatment - DBT is mentioned (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectical_behavior_therapy) but very few people are skilled in it. DBT basically involves retraining an adult's fundamental coping mechanisms. It's VERY difficult to pull off and requires a serious commitment from the patient.BPD is a mental illness in the same way that narcissism is a mental illness - it's a collection of maladaptive and socially-unacceptable personality traits. The treatment is basically saying "Your personality sucks, we need to change it." Good luck with that.

Frightened Inmate number 5 wrote:

Subway runner wrote:

Subway, you seem quite clued up in this field. Always wondered; what's the difference between sociopathy and psycopathy ?

In my experience, people tend to use them interchangeably.

Ben Their wrote:

People with BPD are adept at the game of emotional push and pull. They make you feel like they love you deeply and that you mean the world to them only to tear you down when they think it would hurt you the most. Then, they build you up again so they can...wait for it...tear you down. It's a constant cycle. The highs are very high and the lows are dreadfully low. Stay away.

+1

Very crazy sex, but crazier anxiety over the same sex. One big roller coaster of up and down moods. Not worth the sex if you want sanity....

Thanks so much for this Subway. How I wish in mid-2012, you were there to help me make sense of things.

OP, you need to listen to not only Subway, but all the cautionary tales in this thread. Having lived through it, I know it's almost impossible to break out and see the big picture. You become ill, the stress causes work, other relationships to suffer, you become isolated, withdrawn, and eventually, all you have left are the highs you occasionally receive from Miss BPD.

I hope this thread helps people out there. It was that other Letsrun thread I linked earlier that finally allowed me to see just how toxic things were and that I needed to get out and never look back.

Dating someone with BPD is a miserable, miserable experience. Like everyone is stating here, it is not like normal relationships where you see consistent patterns of behavior good and bad.

With BPD, it starts out PERFECT. They are FLAWLESS in their words, actions, looks, everything. Look up "Mirroring and BPD" and you'll see why they are so good in the beginning. They are brutally intelligent, flirty creatures who are able to play and read on your emotions. They will make you feel like you are the most unstoppable and wonderful person as well. You'll believe that you've received the love of a lifetime in terms of intimacy and emotional support.

Once you get too close, or the relationship is solidified, fears of abandonment and insecurity set in. The extreme, manic highs of the relationship eventually drop off, and they turn into completely different people. That unhappiness (because they are faced with themselves and reality again) is projected on to you, and you become responsible for bringing back the happiness. When in reality, they were always unhappy and it just was masked.

Things get really bad. The sex stops, the insults starts, they become depressed, completely selfish, and judgmental. They hate you and themselves.

They will be great one minute and then two hours later an utter demon. You start "walking on eggshells" around them and furiously try to get back the person that they were in the beginning of the relationship, but that person is gone and was a complete fabrication.

You love this person only because you WORKED so hard to have them love you back. That love will never be returned.

Then it's over.

Then, they have a new boyfriend the next week. She was probably seducing him well before your relationship was over. They cannot be alone. She is saying all the right things to him. He is your replacement. You see where this is going?

I dated a Borderline for 3 years. 18 months in, she became an entirely different person. I stayed because I thought she would change. Never happened. She wrecked me so bad that I had to see a shrink. The shrink told me that they have a 90% failure rate in their relationships. They NEVER last.

OP - take our advice and RUN far away. I know deep down you care about her but she will destroy you.

Thanks for this. So timely. Tried to "help" a much younger woman who I soon found out has bipolar disorder last month (she told me this after the first week of bliss after she hadn't slept for 72 hours). Almost everything described here happened to me within a two week period. She was wonderful to start but when she flipped out on me I gave her ultimatum to get out of my house. Then found out she was "temporarily" homeless and even her parents wouldn't take her back. She was out walking her dog (which I had been taking care of when she was out in the bar) when cops showed up and one laughed when he heard her name (turns out she had assaulted him once) and told me she was big trouble and a Psycho. Went down to court house and sure enough she had three arrests for assault on a domestic partner, resisting arrest, etc. etc. but had two dismissals and one continuance with no finding. So i threw all her stuff in her car and sent message that the cops had been there and said I'd have her arrested if she did anything. Haven't seen her again but got a slew of nasty, vile voicemails and text messages. Phew, consider myself lucky. Still, feel sorry for her in a way cuz she's so f'd up she's doomed.

This is an amazing thread but also somewhat disturbing because I grew up with it. I knew at an early age that something wasn't right with my mom but when you are 4 or 14 what can you do about it? Nevertheless I have gained insight from many posts here and from the links that have additional information.

Pics ???

I have a bit of a different take with the same outcome...my mom is diagnosed BPD. She's now in her mid-60s and was only officially diagnosed a few years ago. It was a very rough ride getting to the diagnosis, especially the last few years.

To us kids (now all late 30s and older), my parents had a pretty solid marriage growing up. We were a blue collar family, solid upbringing but no extras. Money was typically tight, so arguments on that topic occurred on occasions. Looking back, over the years, my mom would subversively plant these stories about how my dad was controlling (esp about $$), emotionally abusive and generally not very supportive of her in general. We thought that was just typical marriage stuff. About 5 years ago, things came to a head in her mind. She secretly planned to leave my dad, hired a lawyer and had divorce papers drawn up and delivered. She asked to stay with my family (we're several states away) so she could work through the process. And since she made it out like she was a battered woman, my wife and I agreed to take her in. She literally snuck out of the house after packing her belongings in trash bags because she felt threatened.

After about a month with us, the picture was becoming clear. We talked a lot, and I started to notice significant inconsistencies in her stories. She began telling these elaborate falsehoods about my dad and her past life (e.g., like she was date raped at 16, how my dad had affairs over the years with other women, or how she had an online affair with a good family friend and then called his wife when he spurned her.) And then the crazy really started to show. Very irrational behavior. She would fly into rages, screaming and yelling over stuff that didn't exist. At some point, she would snap out of it and not really remember lashing out. It was like a light switch was flipped. Keep in mind, we still didn't know she had BPD, but started to realize that she was mentally ill. I set up a counseling session with my parents, my bro and I. That was helpful at first, but things began to continue to spiral. My dad finally confided in me that my mom had been acting this way for the better part of 30 years!

After a few months of being with us, we told her it was time to move on, more because she started to verbally abuse us. She eventually begged my dad to take her back. My dad, who was completely still hurt by my mom's actions of the previous few months, was reluctant. My mom ended up taking some pills (the first of several times) in a very weak attempt as suicide. My dad decided to take her back and commited to getting her the help she needs. Several cycles of intense therapy, different cocktails of drugs, police involvement that led to involuntary commitment to the psych ward at the hospital (three times) and my mom having my dad arrested for a false abuse charge finally led to my dad to cut the cord. Sold the house, split everything and no longer interact.

My kids, who experienced an episode first hand a few years ago, are terrified of her. The mom I knew growing up no longer exists. She's pushed everyone away. To be honest, I really don’t want much to do with her any longer. She’s not willing to really help herself and continues to act very irrationally. Very sad. My recommendation is like that of everyone one else on this board…end it now. Else your life will be a constant hell. However, if you have any ties with her family, maybe reach out to them and encourage them to seek treatment for her. She will never “get better” but she can help manage this condition. But it’s not your responsibility and you can’t save her.

She is your responsibility. She is your mom. She is your family. These people are mentally ill. She can't help herself idiot.

Conundrum wrote:

All the comments about borderline personality disorder seem right on the mark.

But I have a question. Why is it you never hear about males with borderline personality disorder?

Because you're only hearing from men, and the behavior's most obvious when you're in a relationship with the person. Women dating men with BPD might just describe them as abusive or something, too.

"Prevalence of lifetime BPD was 5.9% (99% CI: 5.4–6.4). There were no differences in the rates of BPD among men (5.6%, 99% CI: 5.0–6.2) and women (6.2%, 99% CI: 5.6–6.9)."

Yes, this basically sums up my last two years, get out and do not look back, the person from the beginning of the relationship that you think you can get back was never there to begin with.

Meant to quote Chicago - Stay the Night