BPD or SLA? (just looking for opinions, not official Dx)

Hi there, I'm new here.

I've read a lot about BPD and show some very classic signs. I've also read a lot about SLA (sex/love addicts) and show some very classic signs there. Is it possible to be both, as in one is driving the other? I'm curious to know because I've been in therapy for some time (non pharma), but something has happened recently where my husband has found out I cheated on him (via Craigslist casual encounters with 4 different men) while we were engaged (in 2011), and now I'm looking at this whole thing from a different point of view. I'm worried that I might have to separate/divorce in order to really start to recover. Our first year anniversary is 12/8.

In a nutshell, I'm a survivor of a tremendous amount of abuse from my childhood - mostly sexual (3 different men in my family) and emotional (mostly my mother and father), but some physical as well (by my father) - lots of abandonment by both my parents, etc. I feel like in a PTSD way I've blocked out a lot of memories. I can't remember exact dates or ages some of these things happened, but lets just say I have NO happy childhood memories, and was always surrounded by a lot of alcohol and drugs, in addition to being constantly bounced around between family members and changing schools and homes. I learned at a very young age (4) how powerful sex was when my step father began molesting me... I began smoking cigarettes at age 10, smoking pot at age 13, dabbling in cocaine and ecstacy at age 15, and I would have sex with anyone just to feel better about myself. I was a very troubled child and teen, and then a college drop out when my physical health took a horrible turn and I was diagnosed with a chronic disease. At that time, I was extremely depressed, cutting myself, very suicidal, on Wellbutrin, Buspar, and Celexa for symptoms. Anyway, I'm only mentioning this to show how deep the pain went.

Now, as an adult, I've had some good relationships and some bad relationships, but some things always seem constant - I'm terrified they don't love the "real me" and I feel like I have to put on a facade, I'm terrified they will eventually leave me, and I typically become sexually anorexic once I really "get comfortable" with them. It's like I feel like you can't have sex and love at the same time. I never equated sex to love - I always just did it to make myself feel good or to get people to like me, and consequently I carry a lot of shame as a result of my behaviors.

Recently, as my husband and I are working on this together, I've been thinking about how I feel about myself. I don't like a single thing about me. I'm terrified of being alone. I'm very immature in my emotions - I either love something or I hate it, no in between, and I'm very judgmental of others in an effort to feel better about myself. I also have no female friends - no surprise there. I rely on others to fix or rescue me and it's not fair. I've recently begun to think that perhaps my relationship with my husband is not a healthy one. He loves me and is so supportive, but maybe I chose him because I thought he could fix me. Perhaps I need to heal and love myself before I can be in a relationship - I'm so afraid that this means we have to break up in order for me to begin to heal.

I know sexual "acting out" is typical of BPDs but I'm curious if I'm really addicted to it, or if I can fix it while maintaining/working on my relationship with my husband.

Any thoughts/comments?

eyes_open wrote:Hi there, I'm new here.

I've read a lot about BPD and show some very classic signs. I've also read a lot about SLA (sex/love addicts) and show some very classic signs there. Is it possible to be both, as in one is driving the other? I'm curious to know because I've been in therapy for some time (non pharma), but something has happened recently where my husband has found out I cheated on him (via Craigslist casual encounters with 4 different men) while we were engaged (in 2011), and now I'm looking at this whole thing from a different point of view. I'm worried that I might have to separate/divorce in order to really start to recover. Our first year anniversary is 12/8.

In a nutshell, I'm a survivor of a tremendous amount of abuse from my childhood - mostly sexual (3 different men in my family) and emotional (mostly my mother and father), but some physical as well (by my father) - lots of abandonment by both my parents, etc. I feel like in a PTSD way I've blocked out a lot of memories. I can't remember exact dates or ages some of these things happened, but lets just say I have NO happy childhood memories, and was always surrounded by a lot of alcohol and drugs, in addition to being constantly bounced around between family members and changing schools and homes. I learned at a very young age (4) how powerful sex was when my step father began molesting me... I began smoking cigarettes at age 10, smoking pot at age 13, dabbling in cocaine and ecstacy at age 15, and I would have sex with anyone just to feel better about myself. I was a very troubled child and teen, and then a college drop out when my physical health took a horrible turn and I was diagnosed with a chronic disease. At that time, I was extremely depressed, cutting myself, very suicidal, on Wellbutrin, Buspar, and Celexa for symptoms. Anyway, I'm only mentioning this to show how deep the pain went.

Now, as an adult, I've had some good relationships and some bad relationships, but some things always seem constant - I'm terrified they don't love the "real me" and I feel like I have to put on a facade, I'm terrified they will eventually leave me, and I typically become sexually anorexic once I really "get comfortable" with them. It's like I feel like you can't have sex and love at the same time. I never equated sex to love - I always just did it to make myself feel good or to get people to like me, and consequently I carry a lot of shame as a result of my behaviors.

Recently, as my husband and I are working on this together, I've been thinking about how I feel about myself. I don't like a single thing about me. I'm terrified of being alone. I'm very immature in my emotions - I either love something or I hate it, no in between, and I'm very judgmental of others in an effort to feel better about myself. I also have no female friends - no surprise there. I rely on others to fix or rescue me and it's not fair. I've recently begun to think that perhaps my relationship with my husband is not a healthy one. He loves me and is so supportive, but maybe I chose him because I thought he could fix me. Perhaps I need to heal and love myself before I can be in a relationship - I'm so afraid that this means we have to break up in order for me to begin to heal.

I know sexual "acting out" is typical of BPDs but I'm curious if I'm really addicted to it, or if I can fix it while maintaining/working on my relationship with my husband.

Any thoughts/comments?

Your husband sounds codependent (addicted to rescuing/fixing people basically!)-codependents seem like really nice people and put their own needs before others so that is his issue. He can't fix you but it will help your marriage (and himself of course) if he looks into his own issues there.

I think it sounds like your childhood experiences have taken its toll on you. I have heard that some women that are sexually abused as children may become promiscuous in later life as they're exposed to sexuality at too young an age and that basically they see themselves as a sexual object, nothing more, that they see sex as the only way to get validation or attention from men.

It's funny because I can actually relate to the part where you say that you become sexual anorexic once you actually like someone, that you almost use sex as a tool to hook them in and get their attention. I love getting sexual attention from men too but I tend to think I'm just being "slutty" when I'm doing that and that my real self is this serious person so like you, I do separate the two identities. I can act like a bimbo when I need to and this serious girl when I need to, almost like I separate myself in half. And when I'm in a relationship, I do want men to take me seriously and respect me and almost go overboard on that-in the past, I've gone on feminist rants with men just to prove that I should be taken seriously. I have a fear that a man I care/love will make a fool out of me, take advantage and/or abandon me so I try to show them how smart I am and sometimes this can just come across as uptight. Can you relate to this at all? Just wondering there.

I also can relate to the part where you say you blocked out memories-I can't remember anything before the age of four and I thought that was strange, that surely other people had memories from before that time. I just ignored any signs of dysfunctional behaviour that was going on around me for the most part and bottle my feelings up but then act out in various self-destructive ways. I couldn't say what was really wrong with me, I had to look good so I took my feelings out on myself really. I was being passive-aggressive really but I couldn't actually be assertive in my family as I wouldn't have been listened to..I was always told I was being too stubborn when I did protest and stand up for myself so I wouldn't have gotten a fair hearing from any of my family members. My other family members just wanted to get on with things and I was bringing uncomfortable things to the surface by questioning anything. I would act out too, slamming doors, engaging in rows with people and then later, binge drinking in college. Basically acting happy but then feeling very angry underneath. I was lucky in that I had received nurture from my mum and a neighbour so I think that was a protective factor for me which stopped me from sliding down into worse self-destructive behaviour-I did try cannabis a few times but that was it (not that I think cannabis is a safe drug either, a drug is a drug after all but just to say I didn't try hard drugs), I didn't cut. It's strange-I wanted to be promiscuous but I stopped myself because I would get feelings of shame afterwards and I couldn't deal with it, it was like promiscuous sex brought up all feelings of self-loathing so I just ended up not really liking sex at all because it just seemed to remind me how much I hated myself. I get a buzz/adrenaline rush when I get attention from men-I don't know if it's the same for you-but it doesn't fill the gaping hole inside me, I never seem to get enough attention so try to get more then. I have pretty much stopped myself from attention seeking from men and friends but I still have that urge there.

I think you may have chosen your husband as a type of father figure almost, to make up for the lack of love in your childhood. That you didn't receive the love and care you should have and that there's a deficit there..that sure, your mother emotionally abused you but that your father physically abused you and that your step-father sexually abused you and the three other men sexually abused you too. That men abused you worse than women. Do you actually like men? I'm just asking because at times I pretty much hate men but I still want their validation/approval/attention from them. I'm wondering if you have the same conflicting feelings towards them. How do you feel towards women? You say that you don't have any female friends. Is this because you feel your mother abandoned you and didn't protect you from both your step-father and father? and maybe the 3 men who sexually abused you-were they men she had around the house? That you feel that she let you down too by not looking out for your interests at the time? You don't have to answer that to me of course but I'm just raising the question for you to think about.

I think psychoanalytic therapy may help you deal with your past as it goes quite in-depth-if you read "Get me out of here" by Rachel Reiland, a bpd sufferer, you'll get a flavour of what psychoanalytical therapy is like. Good therapy is basically like reparenting the person, to give them the nurture that they never received as a child. I was reading this in "The Road Less Travelled by M. Scott Peck"-Peck is a psychiatrist so he was discussing this in the book. Peck was also saying that people think that they're in love with someone when they're in the honeymoon phase at the start, when they're infatuated with the person etc but Peck was saying that the honeymoon phase will wear off eventually and that the actual commitment you make to the person once the lust/honeymoon period has faded is the real love, that you're sticking by that person even when the novelty has worn off and you see all their flaws etc. He basically said that real love was a commitment, it was a choice/decision made by the person when the "fun" stuff had ended. I just want to point out that Peck didn't advocate putting up with abuse or bad relationships or anything like that but just to say that people have to put work into relationships, into communicating with one another once the lust has worn off. I would say that growing up in your family, you never really received good communication skills so in your relationship with your husband, maybe when you're distressed you don't actually voice that distress but act it out by having sex with various guys or other self-destructive behaviours. And maybe you're not used to seeing anyone actually stick in a relationship once the lust goes either so you don't know how to model those skills. That you want a healthy relationship but don't actually know how to have one because you've never seen it before, that you don't actually have the requisite interpersonal skills.

The only thing I would say about psychoanalytical therapy is that it's very expensive. DBT is the treatment of choice for bpd so it will definitely be able to treat your bpd symptoms-I can spot a few. I've gone to 12 step group meetings and I found them excellent-maybe it might be your while going to a sex and love addict meeting and see how you get on? I honestly don't know anything about that issue really but it can't hurt to try a 12 step meeting out and see how you get on?

If I had to hesitate a guess, I would say that maybe one of your husband's parents was abusive or some kind of addict, maybe father? And that's why your husband got stuck into that codependent role of fixing everyone around him.

I am not a therapist/professional so this is purely my opinion but I think that's what you wanted anyways-just an outsider's perspective/opinion on the situation.

aren't "fixed" ppl really boring?
(or normal once)
that's why aspd's narcs and psychopaths aspies are good they like the crazy entertainment
and (a lot) don't feel the need to fix (lord knows i don't)
so ether fix yourself (therrapy and not just the quike fix 6 or 12 month fix)

but only if you want a helthy relationship ofc
ther's nothing wrong with having a littel fun life is 2 short make sure you have some fun so lsa is not bad (jmoh)