Can HPDs make us seem/feel disordered too?

Coming to this forum, and doing other reading about PDs, over the past couple of weeks is starting to affect how I perceive various difficult relationships over the course of my life. There is a big danger here: you get a new hammer and everything looks like a nail! I don’t want to run around diagnosing every person with whom I’ve ever had some sort of interpersonal difficulty. But, I’ve got to ask you whether you think my most difficult, devastating romantic entanglement was with a male HPD, and if they can drive you disordered as a sort of response.

I met S at work: he and I joined the same journalistic/scholarly nonprofit at the same time. He was/is younger—23 to my 28 years at the time we met, fully ten years ago now. Part of his appeal was that he was breathtakingly brilliant. His mind is universally acknowledged to be an absolute showstopper; he routinely upstages very smart people twice his age on that basis alone. He’s a little Aspie, which confounds diagnostics a bit.

I didn’t adore him because he was brilliant, though. I adored him because he was so damn colorful. He is a dandy: ruffled shirts, purple velvet, white lounge suit, vintage hats, flowered waistcoats. He has maintained his own website since college—a well-trafficked philosophy/policy/miscellany blog and lots of flattering personal photos. (He is very handsome, and I used to wonder without research about NPD, but now I am thinking HPD.) S is a colorful, passionate, but incisive writer. I was bowled over by his ability (even at that age!) to create such a compelling persona and project it, not just to hundreds of people he knew (his local audience), but to many thousands of people he’d never meet. His body language is eccentric; he’s as likely to give you a courtly bow or a salute as he is to shake hands. In my subculture, he was/is widely adored. He is a high-functioning alcoholic with an acknowledged womanizing problem, though I didn’t know about that initially. He is affectionate yet detached; I feel simultaneously that he truly loves his friends and that he could just leave us all one day and start over without much difficulty.

When I met him, I felt that sense of instant, strong connection. His ability to focus on me, approve of me, see me the way I wanted to be seen, was hugely powerful. He hit on me openly and aggressively, always sought my company at the constant stream of events and parties we frequented, but he never actually asked me out. Or anyway, not for months, at which point I found out that he’d had a girlfriend during the entire period.

Here’s how this became a big problem: I had just read The Rules. I was mostly recovered from the unexpected demise of a two-and-a-half year relationship with a passive/avoidant type, and I was determined not to make the mistake of being someone’s path of least resistance again. I would not make the first move; I would not do 60% of the work, because the result in my experience was a long relationship that unexpectedly fizzles in the end, when you learn you are not, in fact, what that person really wanted.

BIG mistake, it turns out, when dealing with a disordered man. He was a player, and my determination to wait for his next move made me the perfect playmate. The game lasted for years, through three girlfriends on his side (the changes took place when I was living in a different city—otherwise, it might’ve been me…or maybe not!) and another likely-disordered womanizer on mine. S is a triangulator, and I was perfect for that; he needed to have one foot outside of his current relationship at all times. We kissed passionately but never actually slept together. I was always waiting for an auspicious moment, and we never quite had one of those. When I’d periodically lose patience and yell at him, he’d always pull me close. I do think he loved me, after a fashion. For years, I deluded myself into thinking we’d surely wind up together. We can’t no contact each other; we live in a very enmeshed little court society, though I am in a different city now and in an extremely healthy relationship.

During this period, I developed some BPD-ish traits, depression/neediness/drinking/inappropriate texting/inappropriate flirting. Things I am embarrassed about now. I don’t think I am really BPD. Is there such a thing as situational BPD? Does being in love with a disordered person cause you to act disordered also? The weirdest thing is, I thought on some level that those were the needed behaviors. I had heard that his girlfriend was “crazy,” and I thought if I acted healthy, I’d bore him. I wanted to be as crazy as he was to keep him company.

But now, I am in a marvelously stable, healthy relationship with a marvelously stable, healthy guy. This is not hard for me! It’s not boring. It's great! And I am stable and healthy too. What’s up with that? Do others have that experience?

Yes! This was absolutely my experience. I became disordered trying to interact with someone disordered--at least, until I realized that was what was happening.

Yes. I got even more disordered by my first extended love affair.
This woman, I realise, I went for, because she was remarkably like me.
Or, in fact, I idealized myself as being like her, when in fact I wasn't.

It didn't work out and it brought me to realise I was disordered in the first place.

That's what love does. It dis-orders you. It changes the order of your priorities.
That's why people lose themselves in relationships. They act more selflessly.

The other person is like a mirror. Because, by relating to them, parts of yourself are revealed. Yet, to look into this mirror, to see what you are to this person, you need to relate to this person.

And the mirrored image is limited. It is just who you are with this person.
The more beautiful the image, the more compelled you are to remain gazing in the mirror of love.
To take it to an extreme, imagine two mirrors reflecting each other. The couple are so entwined in each other. Their image is just an image of the other, and the other is just an image of an image... ad infinitum.

And that's why, when the relationship is gone, the person is able to re-evaluate themselves, in the absence of a mirror that is now smashed. They rediscover themselves and the universe.

There are many people. Many mirrors. Many possible combinations with many variables. And so we must accept, many selves of us that we go through. To accept the self can change is to accept the flow of existence. Our personalities are not fixed and this is normal. That's good. That means we can change and get better.

"Love is not two people staring at each other, but two people standing side by side, looking out at the world."

Do I make sense?

I picked up some temporary PD traits for sure, a need for validation, an arrogant NPD coping mechanism, and her toxic lifestyle and value system.

Meg,

Those who walk with the wise will have wiser traits. Well with other things I feel this also applies. They can be like toxic plants. They omit this poison, it changes you and you don't understand it. Piece by piece you are changing. But is isn't you, it is the "altered" you. If you are not disordered, they can not make you disordered. They can though, make your life a living hell.

But you said, "feel disordered". Yes yes and more of yes! It's always your fault, remember. It has nothing to do with them. They didn't tell you to "drink"...they didn't say anything to make you "depressed".

It's all you. You and only you.

So they can and do rub off on you/us. How couldn't they? We may be nons but we are human, and as human we have the weakness of being influenced by other humans-no matter what we are or what we know.

CptSaveAho wrote:I picked up some temporary PD traits for sure, a need for validation, an arrogant NPD coping mechanism, and her toxic lifestyle and value system.

sarahbarber wrote:Yes! This was absolutely my experience. I became disordered trying to interact with someone disordered--at least, until I realized that was what was happening.

And what they said is 100% valid!

Hi MEG,

I believe the term for it is: "situational crazy" .In other words, you do crazy things you would not normally do, in crazy situations.

Abusive or emotionally manipulative (Ie: gaslighting) relationships being one of those situations.

OK