How is your relationship with friends?

I mean the ones you go out with, but are not necessarily too intimate. Do you experience the same BPD symptoms? Do you fear they are going to abandon you? Do you idealize them and devalue them? Do you get paranoid and perceive every little thing as rejection? In my experience I mostly have interpersonal relationship problems with my parents, or partners, but less with friends. I used to be worse when I was a teenager (I lost a few friendships due to my paranoid ideas, and I would just start hating them and push them away). Now I feel like I don't want to get too intimate with my friends because I know once I get intimate with someone my BPD takes over...

Your question about relationship with friends is a good one. It has made me think, I have one friend I made at college 14 years ago now, it started out ok, I mean we had something in common. As the years have passed we very rarely meet, just a brief checking in via text. It seems more out of respect. I feel that if we lived closer and spent more time together this friendship wouldn't have lasted. What we have now is what we know. I know their ways of being and don't expect anything anymore.

What I would say is I have messed up a lot of other friendships. I made a lot of effort, but would soon be full of anger. We could be conversing via text, then I get no response and would often go 2-3 months without hearing from them. I would then contact them to see how things were and the same pattern would repeat. Maybe I expect too much of others. But ultimately it would end with me cutting all contact.

This year I made an effort in being more productive and making new friendships, but it didn't work. I felt constantly let down. An example about 4 weeks ago I asked an ex-colleague if we could meet, they said that week they couldn't but would let me know for week following. I am still yet to hear, even though there are online posting things all the time. I don't know if I am in the wrong, but the conclusion that I always come to is it must be something wrong with me or I have done something. This has happened with more than one person.

Family wise, I experience similar. I have a cousin who lives out of the country. Up until last year I had no contact due to circumstances, but after several deaths in the family, I made an effort to stay in touch on a regular basis. Last year I visited them for the first time and again earlier this year. Since then almost no contact. I went 6 months with no response to my last message. Again they were posting things online. I guess what I am saying either there is something I am doing wrong eg my expectations of others is too high and this is normal ways people communicate.

So I have struggles with family and friendships. I would say with my one friend, it doesn't feel like a friendship so I don't invest anything anymore. I did, but I have been burnt too many times. Family again, I have given up on some working. I was told by a T I can't change my family. I am slowly realising I have to put my expectation of others really low. The less I expect the less I get hurt.

I hope that makes some sense, if I was more social I think my relationships whether family or friends they would be much worse.

Athens wrote:I mean the ones you go out with, but are not necessarily too intimate. Do you experience the same BPD symptoms? Do you fear they are going to abandon you? Do you idealize them and devalue them? Do you get paranoid and perceive every little thing as rejection? In my experience I mostly have interpersonal relationship problems with my parents, or partners, but less with friends. I used to be worse when I was a teenager (I lost a few friendships due to my paranoid ideas, and I would just start hating them and push them away). Now I feel like I don't want to get too intimate with my friends because I know once I get intimate with someone my BPD takes over...

welp:

yep. I experience the same symptoms. I fear they are going to replace me, that I am the bottom of the friend chain and am going to be separated so I do lots of extorberent things to stay on their good sides (buying them cars to paying their rent). they are my superiours. I idolize them all day. yes, everything is rejection to me when I get a dissenting opinion or statement.

yeah, I recognized that I always get too intimate and $#%^ hits the fan for me. but it is too late now. they all left. I got nothing. I am nothing. and hopefully in a couple hours I will be nothing.

You know, up until very very recently I never thought my BPD affected my friendships. It seemed to only happen with the romantic interests - but now I see that I only thought that was the case because with romantic interests it gets dialed up to a whole new level. A lot of my borderline attributes were so ingrained that I never saw how they made my friendships dysfunctional.

The difference between friends and romantic relationships is that they are a whole lot easier to hate, and therefore, get rid of. Romance has higher stakes since it's with one person, and ideally, meant to be forever. They become your main person, so losing them means a lot more than losing a friend, at least in my view. I mean, I do care what friends think and worry they may leave me, so I just beat them to the punch and cut them out because they are replaceable.

My most recent friendships showed me this about myself. I got two friends, and at first I really liked them. I didn't put them on too much of a pedestal, but I thought they were good people, I figured I could have a pretty good thing going if the friendships worked out.

But then cracks started to appear. In this case, they would make jokes that I didn't really think were too funny. I can be self-deprecating for sure, but they joked about things that were sensitive issues and not something I could find humour in. I didn't really know how to deal with the issue so I just ignored it, and resentment began to build. I actually didn't get rid of these ones quite as fast, I did wonder to myself if perhaps I was being too sensitive, I told myself I should really put efforts into my friendships since they're so important to our well-being as people.

But eventually the anger got to be too much. And I understand now why, for so many years, I avoided friendships. Because the closer I get, the worse my BPD symptoms become. With a love it would be a combination of anger, desperation, sadness, major age regression. With the friends, it was almost entirely anger, followed by questioning that anger. Friends don't elicit the same desperation, but when I got too close to them, the anger got to be so much that I would self harm to relieve the tension. When things came to a head in these friendships, I found myself fantasizing about committing suicide so that they would feel bad for how they treated me. It was at that point I knew that sustaining these friendships wasn't in my best interest, so I deleted them, blocked them, made it too difficult for them to reach me.

I don't have any symptoms with friends except for splitting. If someone pisses me off, I tend to discard them and move on. If I'm especially pissed I will fck them over first and act like a real kunt. It's just what I do.

I can cut friends off without a thought. I don't like confrontation. I'll just stop speaking to them and they won't know if I'm pissed or just busy. I don't hold grudges. If they come back to me, I can't remember why we weren't speaking. I don't apologize for disappearing. I prefer for them to sit there and wonder what they did wrong.

I was gonna make a topic about friends in the NPD section but can't really be bothered right now so I'll just answer here instead.

I have a hard time really understanding the purpose of having friends. I had many friends when I was younger. I enjoyed it then cause having friends meant less boredom when being in school, backup if older kids tried to pick on me and sometimes it was fun to hang out on weekends and play video games or something like that.

But as an adult I see very little motivation to have friends. I don't really need the social interactions. Support? Most people aren't very supportive and I do fine on my own. Perhaps for engaging in some interests we have in common but that's about it. I almost always end up thinking in terms of what they can bring me. Say a guy has access to a lot of drugs. Or a girl is interested in being FWB so there's sex on the table. Or someone admires my work and provides narcissistic supply. Now these are reasons why I would wanna be friends with someone.

smile5 wrote:Your question about relationship with friends is a good one. It has made me think, I have one friend I made at college 14 years ago now, it started out ok, I mean we had something in common. As the years have passed we very rarely meet, just a brief checking in via text. It seems more out of respect. I feel that if we lived closer and spent more time together this friendship wouldn't have lasted. What we have now is what we know. I know their ways of being and don't expect anything anymore.

What I would say is I have messed up a lot of other friendships. I made a lot of effort, but would soon be full of anger. We could be conversing via text, then I get no response and would often go 2-3 months without hearing from them. I would then contact them to see how things were and the same pattern would repeat. Maybe I expect too much of others. But ultimately it would end with me cutting all contact.

This year I made an effort in being more productive and making new friendships, but it didn't work. I felt constantly let down. An example about 4 weeks ago I asked an ex-colleague if we could meet, they said that week they couldn't but would let me know for week following. I am still yet to hear, even though there are online posting things all the time. I don't know if I am in the wrong, but the conclusion that I always come to is it must be something wrong with me or I have done something. This has happened with more than one person.

Family wise, I experience similar. I have a cousin who lives out of the country. Up until last year I had no contact due to circumstances, but after several deaths in the family, I made an effort to stay in touch on a regular basis. Last year I visited them for the first time and again earlier this year. Since then almost no contact. I went 6 months with no response to my last message. Again they were posting things online. I guess what I am saying either there is something I am doing wrong eg my expectations of others is too high and this is normal ways people communicate.

So I have struggles with family and friendships. I would say with my one friend, it doesn't feel like a friendship so I don't invest anything anymore. I did, but I have been burnt too many times. Family again, I have given up on some working. I was told by a T I can't change my family. I am slowly realising I have to put my expectation of others really low. The less I expect the less I get hurt.

I hope that makes some sense, if I was more social I think my relationships whether family or friends they would be much worse.

Describes my experience almost to a T. While I hardly have family problems, I have problems with friendships, especially offline. In reality, I can't really hold much in, I suppose. I'm shy but I get angry like a flip of the switch. I can get paranoid and sometimes, that paranoia becomes reality. I lost a bunch of friends because, once I told them I was scared, a few months later it became a reality. I really have no IRL friends to hang out with on a somewhat daily basis, especially in school. I have 3 friends I know IRL, but I can't do more than text them.

Though, it might not help me in the least that I can't approach people well. (Though, I can talk to people. I have done so.)

I go through the same cycles with friends as I do with relationships, the affect is much weaker with friends. It happens but I can break out of those thoughts more easily. There is less time and emotional investment at stake with friends. Some friends stay in my life without many problems for years, but eventually, the friendship is dissolved. If I ever feel ignored or of no consequence, show's over.