Does my ex-boyfriend have BPD?

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We all know this is just advice and speculation, no one here is a doctor that I know of, and I'm certainly not one. I can understand you wondering what kind of problems your ex has. It sounds like first of all, he has major depression. All the depressive symptoms you've described sound very accurate about what major depression feels like. It could just be that being social helps his depression get better so he tries to spend as much time with you or some other girlfriend as possible, usually girlfriends are very good at making depression go away, so maybe him being all over you was him taking steps to feeling better and less depressed. It's not a sign of a mental illness to really enjoy being around someone and wanting to spend a lot of time with her.

If he has never gone through periods where he hated you or devalued you, then the relationship symptom would not apply to him. Also, being impulsive and self destructive in numerous ways are very much a part of BPD and if he doesn't have that, then he does not exhibit borderline behavior, he is showing depressive behavior. He could very possibly have atypical depression or SAD or even both. Also, you said he doesn't have anger problems, which is great but again that's just not common in emotionally unstable males. BPD makes a person extremely emotionally unstable and it affects almost every part of their lives and the symptoms are chronic and recurrent all the time. It may be interesting to think about your ex having a personality disorder, but to me he doesn't sound disturbed enough to have a personality disorder, it sounds like he just has a mood disorder.

I have a tough time with this one too. He doesn't sound borderline. Obviously there is depression there. Possibly Aspergers? I'll try to fit it into a personality disorder though. Obviously this is just a guess.

Using the tridimensional personality model

Impulsivity - low
Reward dependence - low
Harm avoidance - high


He seems to share schitzoid, avoidant, borderline traits, but using the tridimensional model, he seems like he might be an obsessional/methodical (NOT OCD) personality type. It seems he might have some long-standing personalty traits that cause relationship difficulties in his life. He seems like a non-impulsive borderline. He's miserable, but not impulsive, so he handles it well.

So he doesn't seem to fit a defined personality disorder, but he might have disordered personalty. Hopefully that makes some sense.

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