Codependent and dated someone with possible BPD

I believe that my ex-girlfriend may have suffered from BPD. I generally try and avoid diagnosing anyone’s mental health issues since I do not have any form of formal education or training in the field but I have read extensively on the condition and she seems to show many of the symptoms.
First off, let me say that I have been diagnosed with some co-dependent personality traits and I am still seeking help to delve deeper into it. This was a recent diagnosis and after the relationship ended.
My ex. GF and I met at our mutual place of employment. She had recently moved from out of state to be with her boyfriend at the time and take the job at the company noted above. I had recently been separated from my wife and we were in final divorce proceedings. I wasn’t looking for a relationship at the time but we hit it off immediately. We worked closely together for the first few months as we shared an office and I was tasked as her mentor. After approx. a month, she was having issues with her current boyfriend. She complained about how he was spending way too much time with friends and she didn’t have anyone because she hadn’t made friends of her own yet. She specifically disliked his best friend because he expressed obvious disdain for her and how he treated her man/his friend. At the time, I didn’t really think anything of this but I guess this should have been an early red flag. She eventually started to pursue me with small flirtatious gestures and told me that she was going to leave her boy friend because it just wasn’t working out.
We had a lot in common as far as upbringing. We both came from broken homes and were raised by single mothers. Both of our mothers suffered from symptoms resembling Bipolar Disorder but neither have ever been officially diagnosed. Parents divorced very young. Father’s remarried quickly and started separate families having very little input in our lives until we were adults. The main difference between our two childhoods is she was the middle child of three siblings so she didn’t have the caretaker responsibilities (her older sister inherited this responsibility) whereas I was the oldest of three siblings so I got the caretaker job.

She ended up leaving her boyfriend and we immediately started to date and shortly thereafter she moved in with me. Everything went great for the first month but then she started to display the following:
Periodic mood swings: She would come home from work and just start breaking down emotionally because of something trivial, like accidentally spilling a glass of water or if something she cooked didn’t turn out the way she expected she would get frustrated and start crying expecting me to comfort her, which I would always do. She would go through phases where she would tell me that I was the best boyfriend, lover, and how amazing I was then two hours later I was the worst at all of these things. During the later she would generally be yelling and it was impossible for me to actually get a word in to discuss it. As soon as I would try and reason with her she would walk away but if I were to attempt to leave the house to go and clear my head she would finally apologize and beg me not to go.

Neediness: She would throw a fit if I wasn’t in the same room as her, or if I wasn’t right beside her. I couldn’t be gone for more than 30 minutes without her calling me wanting to know when I was going to be home and would throw temper tantrums if I couldn’t give her an exact time. Anytime we were out in public she would physically pull my chair up to hers so we were touching. If we were sitting in a booth she would always sit right next to me to make sure we were touching.

Mental and physical abuse: During her mood swings she would come up with some reason to call me an asshole, tell me how I was the worse boyfriend. Make comments about how I must have been a horrible husband, and how I would be a horrible (dad).One time during a tantrum she slammed my laptop down onto the floor and broke the screen and didn’t even remember doing it the next day.
She showed signs of possibly being physically abusive early on in our relationship. I had bought her a cat for Christmas and during it’s training she would get very frustrated and hit him really hard on numerous occasions. You could tell there was anger behind the hits and I know that it hurt him because he would hide for a day or so but I would make a point to say something and she would act like she felt really bad, not sure if it was real or not at this point. So I shouldn’t have been overly shocked when she physically abused me on two separate occasions. The first time, she was berating me and I just wanted to get away from her so she cornered me in the bathroom blocking the door. I picked her up and moved her out of the way (as gently as possible) and she proceeded to follow me into our kitchen and cornered me again. I told her to please let me leave and she slapped me across the face hard enough to temporarily dislocate my jaw. I honestly had never thought of hitting anyone in my entire life and I had never been hit before in any relationship so I didn’t know how to react and just blew it off. The 2nd time was in a similar situation but we were in a car while she was driving. She was going through a mood swing and I asked to her to pull over so she could calm down and she hit me in the chest. I threatened to leave her for the first time in our relationship and the next day she broke up with me.

Self esteem: She was very attractive, highly intelligent, and could be very charming. She used this to gain attention from mainly people of the male persuasion. She had very little to no real friends, no one that she could call a best friend besides her older sister, and if she did have a friend at one time or another they were generally men. During the year that we were together she made little attempt to create any long lasting friendships with anyone of my existing friends or new people that we would meet. She made a point to put rifts between my closest friends and family by making up stories about something they said while we were all together or going out of her way to keep me from spending time with them (similar to what she did with her ex.)
She would always make a point to tell me about some guy that hit on her or was checking her out. Every time we would be out in public at a restaurant or bar she would make a point to tell me that there was a guy staring at her (I am not exaggerating when I say every time.) She kept in some form of contact with all of her ex-boyfriends or at least the ones who kept in contact with her and all of the other ones that didn’t were all assholes. Every couple of months they would text her letting her know what they were up to and would ask her if she wanted to come and visit them. She would generally reply with non-committal answers like “I can’t” or “I am too busy with work” but never “I am in a relationship”.
Anytime a man would say anything that she felt demeaned her intelligence, looks, or saw thru her charm she would verbally berate them. In some cases this happened to friends and family of mine in public venues.

Fear of abandonment: On one occasion I had to go away for 2 weeks on business leaving her home alone. The business trip ended up being more like 3 weeks and when I returned she was happy to see me for about 2 hours and then went into a fit about how it was so insensitive of me to leave her alone for so long. She actually become somewhat distant for a few days after that but things ended up going back to normal once she realized I wasn’t going anywhere else. On two occasions I felt like I needed space to be able to think things thru so I asked her to look into finding her own place. I agreed to help her pay for it but she basically said that the relationship was over if she moved out. Both instances were also followed my very vocal tirades that includes many of the insults about fatherhood and character that I noted earlier. I conceded to having her stay with me in both instances as I didn’t want to lose her at the time. As I noted earlier, she eventually broke up with me when I threatened to finally leave her.

Once she decided to break up with me she became very distant acting like we hadn’t actually had a relationship for the last year. She moved back to her home state to be around her family. I cut off all contact with her but if she hadn’t heard from me every couple of weeks she would contact me about something random like a missing item of hers but would always make a point to tell me how happy she was and how, only after a month, she had met this great guy who actually “get’s her” whereas I didn’t. She called my place of work and was keeping tabs on what I was doing and made a point to say that she was working for a much better company and that I was a loser for staying at mine and doing what I was doing.
We have been broken up for 3 months now and I am still working on getting over her. I started to question my own motives for staying in such bad relationship for so long so I decided to see a therapist. Dealing with my mother's mental issues growing made me worry that I may suffer from codependency issues, my therpaist confirmed it. I obviously don’t want to fall for another woman with similar issues because I drastically changed my life to try and make her happy so I am going to stay single for a while until I work out myself out.

The only thing that she didn't do was physically hurt herself. She was clumsy and constantly would bang up against things but no cutting or hitting of herself. Now her younger sister who suffers from similar symptoms cuts herself.
I remember reading somewhere that this is a key symptom of BDP.

Filio, welcome to the BPD forum and thanks for sharing your experiences with us.

I generally try and avoid diagnosing anyone’s mental health issues since I do not have any form of formal education or training in the field but I have read extensively on the condition and she seems to show many of the symptoms.

As far as I know, none of us participating on this BPD forum is a psychologist. Most of us know, however, what the nine BPD traits look like and we believe we can spot a strong pattern of those traits when it occurs. This is not rocket science. After all, every adult occassionally experiences all nine of the traits. You experience splitting, for example, every time you suddenly realize you've been driving for ten miles and cannot recall a thing, not even the intersections. Hence, none of us on this forum is shy about talking about certain behavior exhibiting strong BPD traits. But, like you, we don't say that it is so strong that it would warrant a clinical diagnosis as such. That is the province of trained professionals.

I have been diagnosed with some co-dependent personality traits and I am still seeking help to delve deeper into it.

Like you, nearly all of us nonBPDs at this forum are self-admitted caretakers having codependent aspects to our personalities. One reason we are here is to better understand our codependent nature. Another reason is to get a better understanding of BPD. Of course, we have read extensively about it and have a pretty good understanding of BPD traits at an intellectual level. What is difficult, however, is to really believe it at a gut level. Learning it at that level, where it is really internalized, transforms it from "knowledge" to "wisdom." That transformation, I believe, is greatly facilitated by group therapy or -- for those of us who don't want to get dressed up and then drive across town -- by coming here for virtual group therapy.

As to how we came to be caretakers, the short answer seems to be that our desire to be needed far exceeds our desire to be loved. The problem is not that we want to help people but, rather, that we are willing to keep doing it when it is to our great detriment. We are drawn to wounded birds and we ignore the men running in the opposite direction. We also ignore the fact that BPD is the type of wound we cannot fix. Attempting to heal a BPD sufferer with your love is a fool's errand. It is like trying to heal a burn patient by hugging her.

Hence, even if you aren't sucked back into a relationship with your exGF, there is some risk you will be drawn to another just like her. It therefore was a wise decision on your part to go to a therapist to find out why that toxic relationship was so intoxicating and addictive that you were willing to tolerate abuse, returning to your exGF repeatedly, even after she had dislocated your jaw.

For the long answer (i.e., the best detailed technical explanation I've seen), go to Shari Shreiber's website at GettinBetter.com/needlove.html. I got the link from Ugli who got it from Changedman on this forum. Both of them are nonBPDs like you. Schreiber articulates very well why "caregiver" men are attracted to the intensity of a BPD relationship and explains how that dysfunctional type of intensity is perceived as "love" by men like us because it reflects what we experienced at a young age with our mothers, who needed us too much.

In my case, it was because my dad was somewhat alcoholic. In your case, it likely was because you were raised by a single mother who had to rely heavily on you, given that you are the oldest of three children. It is not surprising, then, that we grew up feeling that we are not loved for who we are but, rather, for what we can do for someone desperately needing us.

filio1976 wrote:The only thing that she didn't do was physically hurt herself. She was clumsy and constantly would bang up against things but no cutting or hitting of herself. Now her younger sister who suffers from similar symptoms cuts herself.
I remember reading somewhere that this is a key symptom of BDP.

the hpd/bpd trait person I encountered was 'clumsy' as well, and frequently felt ill or had pains that would appear and disappear.

Yeah, my ex suffered from all sort of ailments while we were together from constant near fainting spells, migraines, back pain, and the possible onset of Diabetes. The later was due to a test that showed she had low sugar but it ended up being one of the false positive type tests due to her lack of sugar intake that day but from there on out she had Type 2 Diabetes. The doctor even told her on a follow up visit that she didn’t have Diabetes but she went around telling everyone that she did. I called her out on it one time. I was no longer allowed to go to her Dr. Appt.’s after that.

It’s also my understanding that BPD sufferers may have been sexually abused when they were growing up. My ex made mention of this on a few occasions but never went into detail. Do they also have a tendency to make up stories of sexual abuse when they are adults? My ex. claimed that one of her doctors tried raping her during a checkup. She refused to call the cops and report him but she called the cops on me later on in our relationship because I wouldn’t give her keys to the car when she had been drinking. She also never told her older sister about the rape incident and she generally told her everything.

The thing that gets me the most about these conditions is the tragic nature of their existence and relationship with one another. I can see why so many people in similar relationships as mine say they have found their soul mate. In a very sick and twisted way it’s actually true to some extent.

BTW – Thanks for that info about Shari’s site. I checked it out and it was the most eye opening info I have come across on my situation. I found myself reliving my relationship all over again as I read her info.

Filio, I'm glad you found the Schreiber site helpful. The article that my link points to is her keystone piece, around which all her other articles are built. It explains how a "core wound" in childhood causes us codependents to share a number of traits with BPDs, e.g., difficulty handling true intimacy and low self esteem.

I can see why so many people in similar relationships as mine say they have found their soul mate. In a very sick and twisted way it’s actually true to some extent.

And she contends that people at the same level of emotional development tend to be attracted to one another. Like you, I believe there is some true in that contention but I am not sure what it means. We nonBPDs are able to regulate our emotions quite well, which shows in our ability to self-sooth and not be triggered into rages. In that sense, then, our emotional development proceeded well. I therefore assume she must be referring to some other aspect of emotional development in which we nonBPDs are stunted. I suspect it is the ability to handle intimacy, otherwise why would we be so strongly attracted to women who cannot offer it. But I'm not sure if it is limited to that because she did not seem to clarify just what it is.