Do you avoid intimacy?

To anyone with BPD, do you avoid all intimacy? Physical and emotional.

I try my best to avoid commitments and getting close to people all together. I remain in solitude as often as possible.

The moment that anyone gets too close I slowly fade away, or run really fast. Which ever is necessary.

As a rule, yes. I don't always stick to it, but I've always felt that if you let yourself get attached to someone, they'll cheat/leave/mock/otherwise destroy you. Usually, I drive them away before they get close, but the ones who push in close anyway, I have an emotional field day with, which I then feel guilty about, which makes me depressed, which makes me dangerous to myself. So I try to avoid getting close to people.

The three people in my life that i became intimate with i became strongly attached too and let them defined me but i also drove them away, became obsessed and embarrassingly enough stalkerish. I have not completely let go and live in regret, embarrassment and sadness everyday about it especially two of them.
I can't help obsessing in my mind if i become attached to someone and i tend to become ambivalent towards a person because i know that who i am really and my flaws and unsure of myself is enough to not be able to make a partner stay and love me forever and form anything serious out of it so i know that admitting all that who i really am could make them have doubts and turn away so i tend to without realising until now self sabotage and drive them away before that happens.
I end up in a big mess of self destruction and suicidal behaviour and nobody no friend or family member can soothe me or be a support i go off and in my state.
I tend to avoid going out with anyone when they ask so this doesn't happen i am very insecure anyway and i let that stop me and also to avoid another attachment after sex or something because it always ends the same way its not about learning from mistakes its just how i am and i can't build self esteem up i am also worried because of how things end i have little experience in long term and successful relationships which makes me not mature in ways and I know that could also drive them away during the relationship.
If the person just wants to hook up i tend to feel nothing and avoid any random hook ups anymore and never go on dates i don't bother... it needs to become a rule with me also. I drain myself, i can't hold down relationships, i am needy and clingy and unstable and another relo breakdown will only push me to insane levels again and make me regret it all or commit suicide.

quite the opposite for me. I latch onto people and can't let go. I just want them to give me all the love I never got as a child or something, probably. the only time I don't like intimacy is when I'm angry. when I'm pissed off I don't even want to be touched.

even my psychiatrist is concerned of how i have never let go of the same person for years and they went overseas and he stopped talking to me because of things i said or did ... and i am obsessed and crazy about it he asks why SO obsessed and its embarrassing to be that needy and desperate for someone but its ###$ up how strong attachments can become they become our life.

Thank you all so much, this is very insightful

I guess when I was younger I was very clingy, but I'd keep an emotional forcefield in between me and my SO.

As I get older and more damaged I avoid contact all together. I have realized that attaching is my #1 cancer, knowing this leads me to not want to get involved - relationships are evil.

I consider myself to be a "high functioning BPDer", so it's only when I am stressed out that I begin to show serious signs of the disorder so it's really best for me to just stay away?

I go from calm, cool, numb to completely dysregulated, suicidal, anxious, paranoid, depressed, etc etc in 0-60 seconds.

So, like fueledbycoffee mentioned above, I avoid all possibilites of attaching.

I am just curious how normal this is with this disorder and if anyone has successfully worked through it.

I should add, I actually get VERY attached to people. I just do not let them know it or see it. I am very controlled with it. And I attach to one person at a time.

Usually it comes off as lack of interest on my part and things never transpire, if they stick with me I put them through an "emotional field day" as mentioned above.

I always end up breaking my own heart. </3

I actually mentioned this in another thread, but YES!!!!! I was extremely socially anxious as a teenager and as a kid, people where always something to be afraid of rather than enjoyed, I see that this social anxiety comes from both my grandmother being an orphan and my grandfather having an alcoholic dad and having to begin working as a child to help his mother out in Chile. (to over simplify of
course, as there is more to it than the basic physical *triggers when it comes to mental health and trusting others)

I remember going through a couple of phases throughout my late teens till now where I made a couple of friends where I had to detach, I'd work myself up to the state of never answering the phone and they would slowly disappear.... everyone does eventually.

I have done it with all of my family who r in Chile which has made it very easy. The people that have stuck around may not think I'm the friend of the century but they r the ones I have put actual effort in to keep around.... and I can count these people on one hand.... but still not count on any of them.... I mean I could if I needed help with something but..... if they disappeared I'd be sad but ok....

Intimacy is weird- I think this is where my anti social tendencies come in-I can tell a complete stranger the most disgusting fact about my life, and not think twice, I'll pick up a man on the side of the road- and have- many times, dance around naked and have sex (not so much any more as I am becoming impartial to sex al ltogether) I work as an Escort currently. Yet if I get along really well with a man who touches my heart the last thing in the world I want to do is have sex with him!!! Its like its a total libido killer!!!

all too much

i do the classic, keep one mate, who i latch onto and systematically test to see "how much they really love me cuz i know they don't *finger snap*"

however i am in a very serious relationship, for all intents and purposes, husband, fiance, whatever

DOES ANYONE have any advice on how feel more intimate and safe being intamate. i mean sex by the way.

I do avoid it. I find it difficult to forge "intimacy" with others, and keep it to a minimum. Maybe not on purpose so much but I somewhat feel that everyone doesn't deserve it from me, or something? I guess that's a weird way to say it, but I was needy and clingy for much of my life, and it seems like the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction.

It isn't that I don't care about others - I deeply do. I have a few very close friends that I love a ton, and even though I've had a rocky relationship with my parents, I do love them. Now, my sister is my favorite person on earth. But other than that small concentrated handful of people, I do not find myself craving intimacy with others.

Is that odd? I feel that there is a big difference between having acquaintances (tons) and friends (handful). I think maybe somehow that is my own control to limit how many others may be able to hurt me? Not sure, but that personal inventory can be for another day. :0)

I guess it also bodes well to say that I do not bond sex and love (intimacy) together at all. The two are completely polar opposites for me.

GREAT THREAD!!!!


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