A counselor told me concerning the hpd, "her dress and appearance is a big red flag indicator for hpd". Yes it is in the criteria, but as I sat there, I couldn't help but notice:
The counselor had a nice manicure.
The counselor took the time to do her make-up quite well.
The counselor was nice dressed herself.
The counselor seemed to have lip injections (not hard to spot fake lips on certain nationalities, and they looked more fuller by the session!).
This gave me a tremendous itch to ask her about her appearnce, like how does an hpd's differ So Much from hers?
So to what extent is it within reason to gauge dress and appearnce as an hpd trait when a lot of women dress good and are well kept? Not all hpd's dress like a Lady Ga Ga, right?
I ask because this cinco de mayo weekend, I went out on a date. I remember that when the bill came for our drinks, she did something weird: she acted like she was going into her purse to pay for her drink (but it was clearly an act, i've seen it when it happens for real. this was different....if I had a grammy I would have given it to her for best acting role of "woman who pretended she wanted to go dutch" of the year).
Anyway I told her not to worry (wasn't like it was an expensive diamond rind or something). So we hit another spot. Later the bill comes. I see the same act after I asked her the first time not to worry about the drinks (she thanked me too, never said 'no, i'd rather go half', so it is not that type of situation). It was fake. So I started thinking, fake acts are performed by a fake personality....
Well, if flags are small, and if red flags are something to pay attention to (they determine a lot of how i allow myself to feel about where things are going and where they are likely to end up if they go that way), then would you agree that the initial red flag is the smallest one of all. I mean it was clearly an act, but like many red flags, it could be minimized and chipped away at (we could even say, "that is a sign of a healthy woman because it revealed a lack of entitlement due to the fact she was willing to pay for her own drinks). But again, this was an act, like none i've seen before when it came to a woman offering to pay for her drinks during a date.
Women have offered to pay for my drinks before, and I allowed them to if they wanted. Not like I am not willing to get them next time, should "a next time" be allowed.
Anyone have any good initial red flag examples? Like even ones you missed, looking back-something so small that was really SO BIG.
Or does anyone know of some likely good initial red flags concerning the pd's?
Often it is said, "it is better not to get involved with them"? Well, sometimes it's hard not getting involved with them because by the time we know we are dealing with a "them", well, we've already gotten involved....
And if we say, "you can felt it". Well what are some examples of the "it" we feel? No offense to those who believe that, but I don't believe any amount of experience with disordered women gives one ESP, nor do I believe that healthy people "fail" to attract them. A perfect point of this could be truck stops. I have heard from truck drivers that high quality looking women are always there, female predators after the trucker's money (like that serial killer girl in Thema and Louise, based on a true story). They hit up "everyone".
Women on the corners of those bad parts of down we must drive through from time to time hit up almost every passer by (unless your car looks like an unmarked police car
).My point is the disordered women also don't ever seem to get ESP, so that they don't go after a "healthy" person. Take a happliy married man ten years, kids, good job....they still will go after him. They often do to, and this happens a lot (happily married people getting hit on by someone who is "bad news"-how couldn't that be "bad news" trying to break the bonds of a good solid marriage? Not caring they have a wife/husband (lack of boundaries).
The closest I've seen is them sort of testing a person (but after they already were talking, the attraction process already begun). It's like they get to know their mark so they run them through some quick test to make sure they'll put up with stuff (like they'll tell you how their ex was "just so jealous" because they 'simply were talking to this guy/girl at 2am in the morning every week and they were 'just friends'. That verbally abusive, jealous ex of theirs!! How could they get angry over them "just" having "friends"??
If you express pity, they know they can get away with it with you.....you'll put up with it, and if you'll put up with that, you're likely to put up with other stuff too. Yet if you point out that maybe anyone would get suspicious if they found their husband/wife texting and talking to a "friend" at 2am in the morning, they may get jealous/concerned, and angry if they minimize it and accuse you of being "so jealous", "controlling", etc.), but I've only seen this of npd/bpd (these screens) in the initial phases of social interactions that are clearly beginning within the context of potential dating/getting to know one another better.
The initial red flags of the hpd could be......?
A major motivation for this thread is that some places I don't expect to meet pdi's. So if I'm there, and meet a woman, meeting a woman in those types of places I want to be mentally healthy. Like church (if i'm out, I am not shocked about the fact the club I may be at has pdi's there. so the guard is up....i know things may die quickly, etc. but at the same time I'm not paranoid and just making up a bunch of excuses not to date and take a chance. plus red flags are easier to interpret when you weigh the location into the equation, the location of where you meet someone).
At church, I would be likely to dismiss red flags or rationalize them. After all, she is a church goer! Well, at this church type of place....some weird stuff happens. I keep thinking , "it's because she is nice that she makes it a point to look at me that way or the way she indirectly just gave me her number...."here is what my business card looks like", I go to give it back to her, never asking for her services to begin with, and she says, "keep it" (yes, that led to stuff in the past, but this is not the usual location).
She is making passes. Very subtle ones.
It is hard for them not to escalate, or get me attracted, when all these little things (this type of touch through a handshake, the extra type of "hug" you get when attraction is involved.
It's there. She is married. Yet it is not just her. And if I meet a woman at a place like this, I'd like it to be a single/good one. I don't mind encountering a potential pdi when i'm out because they are higher in population in many of those places.
Anyway, the "keep my card" girl I know and feel (seen that one before). Nothing looks odd to her husband, "it's all business". Yet I never inquired a glib about her line of work. She gave me her phone number in a way she is safe but gave me an open door (same exact thing began the ex hpd romance...."if I have any questions, give her a call". Well, she gave plenty of other open doors, sublte ones, and when i called, she responded. Suddenly, we were talking all the time about unrelated work issues: our dates, how we like such and such about one another, you know how it goes. But there are other women too....who without question give me an open door, and yet shouldn't for a lot of reasaons.
A warning from my counselor about not no contacting my mother:
"if you do not completely disconnect yourself from hpd, you will always be connected to it. by trying to manage your mother, you are trying to manage hpd, and this is something you cannot/should not have to do in order to preserve your emotional health. if you tolerate certain behaviors from your mother (she will cause grief no matter how hard you try to manage her behavior), you will tolerate hpd from other women, trying to manage it, because you are conditioning yourself to do this very thing remaining in contact with your mother. Cut the entire mental illness out of your life, otherwise it will keep returning like a cancer that isn't completely cut out. I'm very sorry but you came here for my professional opinion and this is it.".
-paraphrased quote from psychologist.
When I told him due to her illnesses I wanted limited contact instead, I was dismissed as a client. One counselor doesn't believe in her illnesses, but rather that they are exaggerated (and they have been too...like the little boy crying wolf, but there is also truth to her illness too-can't make up a ruptured disk. can't make up the results of a nerve study. she is on disability, and the Dr's backed it.
So to live with limited contact, ouch.
To live with no contact and she dies without me even knowing she got sick so i could have seen her last and been there for her, a bigger ouch to live with.
No, she would not be there to tormet me wtih her hpd and chronic crazy ways of getting attention when she can get it (usually at surgery time, she has many surgeries, but a dr. would not cut her open for no reason), but the memory of me never getting the chance to say goodbye or see her, to be a peace with her before she dies would tormet me.
Or maybe I should 'just' turn into a cold blooded mother bleeper? If in fact every time I plug into my mother, I indirectly plug into hpd? Because ironically, if I am away for months or years (and keep our conversations controlled and short, controlled as to how often I talk to her), hpd women seem to disappear.
Surgery time, they start popping up. My heart would say, "just avoid them when they pop up", but it can't be coincidence that when I start dealing with her, that it seems I begin to in one way or another deal with "them"-just as I was warned by the counselor who was so dogmatic of his no contact suggestion that when I didnt' accept it he got rid of me as a client,
"I'm sorry, but as the saying goes, you can lead a person to the water, but you cannot make them drink".
In the end, I will mention my mother is not worse than any other pdi. It isn't like she is the devil pd. I did have good times with her, but they are getting more short and far between the more "need" she develops.
So when I speak of her, it is not a monster.....but if hpd has the dragon, then according to some she is a monster.
And how does that sound, calling your mother a monster when you don't want to go there?
The sadest part of all, is one can never satisfy a pdi. In a date or short lived relationship, maybe I and the woman involved satisfied eachother in certain ways before I end it, or it ends by her, whatever.
No contact is my policy then, and its easy. She isn't a relative. Instead of getting all bent out of shape, I roll with it, because I never intended to "marry" her to begin with....nor did she intend to marry me. So it is sort of simple to realize it can't go any further without suffering and anquish.
With a relative.....things get more complicated. But arguing over a yellow watch early cinco de mayo weekend is not my thing. Arguing over how the x-mas is spent, whose house it is spent with, and trying to manage a mother trying to soak me up to the point she ruins my x-mas....that isn't my thing either.
Even the nicest puppy, if you keep screwing with it, just might growl at a person. And now in a few hours I go to church with a paranoia I haven't had in a long time, and out of no where, the "female setting" changes in there.
And I wonder what the initial red flag is. Maybe it is me maintaining "the hpd connection" 'just' because she is family. Just like a father has no right to physically molest his daughter (would we she is wrong for no contacting him??????, a mother has no right to emotionally molest her children.
At this point, I can think of no other adjective I am so angry: Blatant Emotional Molestation.
And if she keeps it up, I swear that for her it will translate into:
alt.end
Because there won't be any, "looking back". No more excuses, surgeries, or guilt trips will bring me back. So maybe I am one crazy mother bleeper, because when it comes to staying with a disordered women we say,
"I suggest you see a counselor".
But when it comes to staying with a disordered relative we often say,
"I'm glad you are trying to work things out".
A counselor cannot, according to his own words, help you manage a disease in a way you will suffer any less.
Instead, they say, "to get rid of the disease, no matter where it is located" (like located within family).
Cold words, perhaps. So maybe I need to apply the cold mother bleeper mode to family too, as I can be that type of man too if I am backed into a corner. And for me, alas, a simple question has led to what seems like an inevitable war:
"The war of how hard it can be to put yourself into the position where you don't need to fight".
In only a few short weeks, the hpd mother has brought me to my knees. The time away from her (limited contact), just makes it more difficult to tolerate her the next time, because I get so used and comfortalbe without needing to argue over elementary stupid crap.
And I suppose, that if all that bad stuff happens: that she dies without me there, or needs assistance and can't get it, that she did it to herself.
I didn't do it. She did. She wanted it that way, because like she always says when she gets another incurable illness,
"Sometimes like Doctors there is nothing you can do".
So maybe that is The Initial Red flag for me, anyway, is that I have conditioned myself to tolerate hpd in far too many circumstances, and this keeps me plugged into it, all because I'm trying to do the right thing.
A different version of: The White Knight In Shining Armor Complex.
Not for a woman, but rather a White Knight for family instead. Thus the same snare, only disguised and obscured through the veil of: Family.
So then, the missing piece to the puzzle would be, not to even look for the dan thing. The solution to the problem is not to even try to solve it....because there is no "it".
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