AvPD and romantic relationships

It has never even crossed my mind to go to a hooker for pleasure. Mainly because it is illegal here, and frankly I don't think I could look myself in the mirror afterwards without feeling intense shame about myself. Would rather live in celibate the rest of my life. But then I am not looking for a "quick fix" as sex is only one fraction of a relationship. What is more important is acceptance, understanding and security with the other person built slowly over time, if that is not on the map then sex is out of question.

This is one of my favorite topics...it's the big question at this point in my life. I'm 56 years old, was married for 28, in that relationship for 30 years. I had no awareness of being AVPD till a year ago...although many things didnt feel right to me, I feel we both hung in there and tried to get our needs met best we could through a partner that didn't understand how we felt. But my relationship began in my late teens and lasted till I was 48. In the beginning, being so young and both coming from dysfunctional homes, we were just glad to have each other. We were busy living...getting started working, having a child, getting a home, then maintaining it all. It was highly stressful because we conflicted so much...yet we went thru it despite the knowledge we were not as compatible as our young hormones indicated. It was a long turbulent marriage that was aggravated each of our personality characteristics...yes we both had issues but weren't aware.

So, it leads to the question...if two aware personality disorders were to begin a relationship and took steps to understand and manage their disorders, how would they do? First, I'm going to state that I personally believe that disordered works best with disordered...and certain types of disordered are going to best with a complementary disordered personality. For instance...an AVPD is likely to have a difficult time with undiagnosed narssasistic personality partner, yet they may be able to maintain a loving relationship with an aware OCPD. probably depends on how many characteristics overlap and how capable both partners are at communicating and feeling empathy for their partner. I don't think it's impossible for a so-called "normal" and a disordered personality to to have a relationship, it's just feels unlikely that they would have much initial attraction in the first place...unless the "normal" isn't quite as normal as thought to be...many, many people have disordered traits yet aren't diagnosed or confirmed. It's a giant grey area out there.

I'm feeling that disordered needs disordered. But for a relationship to survive, it needs a level of communication, tolerance, empathy and patience. No relationship is easy. There is no better feeing than feeling connected and loved. Maintaining it requires work and stepping out of ones comfort zone. If two partners could agree to work with a good therapist, skilled in understanding the thought patterns of those with disorders, the odds would be improved.

I'm skeptical about children's involvement with PDs . Those young minds are really needing to be nurtured, and that requires a magnitude more than just two PDs being able to sustain a relationship. It could easily be asking too much to hope to raise healthy children in such an environment. At my age it's not much of an issue.

Let's keep in mind that most relationships fail. It's a difficult thing to sustain for anyone. Yet, we are like salmon, constantly swimming upstream, trying to obtain that connection that completes us. It's our primal instinct. It may be obsolete, but most of us still want it.

I did not date prior to meeting my husband, and the few times that anyone would start to show an interest in me I would push them away. I was 19 when I met my husband, and I usually do not tell people how we met. We met randomly through social media. We started our relationship off slowly, and I let him control how often we talked and saw each other. Overtime we went for seeing each other once a week to everyday( two years before we got married). I think that letting him control this kept me from feeling rejected if he ever turned down plans to get together. We did not live together before we got married, so I was I was very anxious about living together but it turned out to not be an issue.

When we were dating we did almost break up twice. The first time was after a few months because I was still religious at that time which caused issues. The sound time we almost broke up was because my sister convinced me I was too young to just commit to one person. Luckily, we did not breakup; instead we decided to just date, and not talk about marriage for a few years. Other than that we don't really fight, and when we do we find a mutual agreement.

I am concerned that going no contact with father could cause issues for my husband could cause a strain on our relationship because my husband is a people pleaser. As well, my therapist has pointed out that my dad seems to have realized that he can manipulate my husband. Either way, we are going forward with going no contact.