A Lady with Histrionic Personality Disorder.

We shall not cease from exploration,
And the end of all our exploring,
Will be to arrive where we started,
And know the place for the first time.

T.S. Eliot.




A Lady with Histrionic Personality Disorder.


There are many sites on the Internet that list the symptoms of the various personality disorders that are known or believed to exist, but these symptoms are usually expressed in general terms. I want to unearth specific incidents, from my ex girlfriend’s behaviour, that illustrate these generalities. Some of the incidents I describe below are necessarily banal and trivial, but it is precisely because such behaviour is usually so undistinguished that people do not clue in to the fact that the behaviour they are witnessing is coming from someone with a recognised pathology. Very often, these odd behaviours are only an exaggeration of how we all think and act from time to time; thus it is not apparent that the person in question is in an abnormal state of mind. But we sit up and notice when we witness a constant flow of strange behaviour, of behaviour that does not make sense in terms of the rational model of the mind with which we credit other people.

So, it is precisely the banal and trivial incidents that I want to write about. I only wish that I could have remembered more of them.

To provide a focus, the headings to the sections describe some of the main diagnostic criteria for Histrionic Personality Disorder, and the sections detail my experience of everyday examples of each of these criteria.

The question why I stayed with her as long as I did would be the subject of another essay, but it is not the subject of this one.












Introduction.

Lively and dramatic personality.

Longing to be the centre of attention.

Flirtatious, and uses sexuality inappropriately.

Inability to Connect.
Lack of Affection and Tenderness.
Secret Life.
Uses People.
Only Ever Thought of Herself.
Lack of Meaningful Communication.
Enjoyed Hurting me.

Intense but brief relationships.

Phoney declarations of love and affection.

Inability to examine own motives.

Lack of specificity and curiosity.

Missed opportunities, through not behaving in her rational self-interest.

Vanity and obsession with youth.

Of diverse things done.
Crazy Behaviour.
Unreasonable Demands.
Control.
Nuts.

I give up. (I can no longer tolerate her superficiality and inability to connect.)

Physical abuse.

Conclusion.

Postscript.







Introduction.


When I first knew her, in January 2001, I thought the reason that she was so trying was because I wanted to go too fast, and that she did not share for me the feelings that I had for her. Perhaps she thought I was too old for her? Yet we would spend hours and hours chatting on the phone. Unfortunately I lived a long way from her and could only get to see her alone at the weekend, although we also met at college during the week.

With hindsight, I am convinced that she had a mental disorder, one that was not so extravagant that it would reveal itself to anyone on first acquaintance, unless they were an expert, but enough to wreck her relationships and cast a shadow over her life and the lives of others. She suffered from what I now know to be Histrionic Personality Disorder.



Lively and dramatic personality.


What everyone, myself included, found so appealing was her lively and extravert personality. She was talkative, funny, smiled a lot, and made all sorts of very becoming gestures. All this was terribly endearing to a reserved, academic man like me. But, in truth, all men were initially attracted to her manner and her personality. She was also open to new experiences and sensations. She traveled abroad as much as her finances would allow. She always wanted to experience the most thrilling rides at the fairground. (Alone. I wouldn’t go near them.) She had even done a bungee jump.

But over time I discovered that her behaviour was more than just lively and gregarious. She was unusual, and very difficult.



Longing to be the centre of attention.


When I approached the classroom it was always easy to tell whether she had arrived in class, since her voice was louder than the other students.

Whilst we were walking through a busy park one Sunday afternoon it began to rain very heavily. To keep dry she put a white plastic supermarket bag over her head, making a hole for her face. I thought this was funny and cute. But it was surprising to see her make such a spectacle of herself in front of crowds of people. She made herself look ridiculous in order that strangers would notice her.

When I was stopped at traffic lights, she banged on the passenger window of the car as a complete (male) stranger walked past. She wanted him to look at her. There could have been no other explanation.

I took her to the cinema one evening and she left her seat to go to the ladies. When she returned she did not take her original seat next to me, but instead sat in a seat further down, next to a complete (male) stranger. He and I were alarmed by this strange behaviour, and after a few seconds she returned to her original seat. I can only imagine that she wanted the man’s attention. A further unusual aspect to this incident was that when the man looked across to me, somewhat bewildered, I, embarrassed, made a sign to him to indicate that she was crazy. She saw this, and I imagined that she would be very, very upset by my insulting gesture. But she did not seem to mind. Usually, I would have been severely rebuked if she thought I was offending her.

When we visited another park she started dancing, alone, in the middle of a grassy area, in full view of all the other people in the park. Listening to music through headphones on her MP3 player, (or whatever it is called). She acted like a child, dancing, jumping, frolicking, and running about like a six-year-old. (She was thirty-one.)

On one occasion when we were going for a walk, she could not bring herself to go past a crowd of people drinking outside a pub, and we had to turn back. Thinking that she must have a fear of being observed, I told her that the drinkers would not even notice her, that they were all chatting amongst themselves. But I realise now that it was probably the prospect of not being noticed that caused her anxiety.

She bought herself a mobile phone with the video function. Walking through the park one day she started to make a recording of herself, describing the park and the sunny day in an extempore fashion, as if she were a TV presenter or an actress. I was struck by how skillfully she handled this. She had a natural talent for making a presentation on film.


Flirtatious, and uses sexuality inappropriately.

The extent of her flirting and juggling of boyfriends would have been off the scale coming from a pretty and extravert western teenager, let alone from a thirty one year old (married) lady whose own country possessed a culture that esteemed modesty and faithfulness in women.

When I was in college, she would endlessly flirt with other students. And she did not care whether I witnessed it or not.

Once, another student came up to her in class and they started to discuss some class work, then she took him by the hand and asked him to come outside with her, and they went to another room alone.

She “went off” with a few male students in this fashion. This made me very upset, obviously, but she said that she meant nothing by it, that it was insignificant.

Then, one day I saw her walking home from college with her arm around the waist of another student. I remonstrated with her on the phone and told her that I would not see her again. She said that she was sorry, that she was just being friendly, and that she was “so lonely”. I drove back to her flat and we went for a meal.

She would be flirtatious with virtually every man she met. I saw her drive her landlord to distraction with her alluring behaviour. She once told me that another prospective landlord had implied that they could come to some private arrangement concerning rent. One of the male staff at a college she was considering attending offered to treat her registration favourably, in return for sex. These advances shocked her, but I doubt that the men involved had not been given some encouragement. Yet, in truth, she may have had hang-ups regarding physical contact, or at least she did with me. She would go just as far as was necessary to keep a man in tow.



Inability to connect.

One “connects” with another person through an effort to understand what his or her desires, needs, beliefs and interests are, and through a related effort to share experiences with that person. To try to become involved with their life, to enrich their experience of life, support them in their difficulties, and help to make their lives comfortable and happy. I desperately wanted to connect with my girlfriend, and for her to want to connect with me. I tried and tried to make it happen, but it was never to be; she was constitutionally incapable. Her inability to connect, and her related failure to appreciate that “connection” was the still point around which every meaningful relationship turns, was the key to understanding her problem with relationships.


1. Lack of Affection and Tenderness.

In all the time I knew her there were never any times when we shared cuddles and caresses. Everything was done for her.

She never seemed to demonstrate any affection towards me, except in a showy, dramatic, way, as though she was acting a dramatic scene on the stage.

Especially, she never wanted to kiss me, but would always turn her face away at the last moment, leaving me feeling humiliated and miserable. Her face was always turned away from me, even when I embraced her. Perhaps she wanted to tease me, but her behaviour was tedious and repetitious, and eventually made me bewildered and angry. To tell the truth, I was inexperienced in what to expect from the point of view of physical intimacy, as I had not had many girlfriends before I married my wife, and I had been married for sixteen years. So I had the notion that her behaviour was somewhere in the normal range, if not absolutely typical, and that I just needed to know her for longer. (One keeps on blaming oneself, thinking that there is something wrong with one’s own actions.)

But she always seemed to want to turn what ought to have been a moment of closeness and affection into a wrestling match. Tossing her head back in a showy, dramatic style, or else pulling her body away. I thought, even then, that she thought herself an actress playing out some role.


2. Secret Life.

There was a mass of information, some personal, and some everyday, that she never disclosed or discussed. Her relationship with her husband (who lived thousands of miles away and from whom she seemed to be estranged), and with her blood relatives; her college life and studies. It was as though she wanted to maintain several lives, and I had a part to play in only one, and must be excluded from the others. Clearly, such a withholding and limiting frame of mind could never have led to an enduring and meaningful relationship in any of her lives; no man would tolerate such a state of affairs for long, unless he had something to hide too.

She would date other men whilst she was seeing me. Even arranging a date on the college stairs whilst I was supposed to be talking to her in the computer room, - she did not know that I was eavesdropping. When I told her that I had seen him walking away from her flat one evening, she denied that he had visited her, but years later she admitted that she had dated him a few times.

There was a two-year gap in my relationship with her. When I started seeing her after two years apart she was living somewhere else. She would not tell me her new address for weeks after I had started dating her again. I eventually discovered where she lived by accident, by parking outside her door as she came out the house.

I knew that she was still a student and I casually asked her what and where she was studying. She would not tell me.

One evening she went out with her work colleagues to play snooker. The next day I casually asked which snooker hall or pub she had gone to, but she would not tell me.

These were innocent queries, just ordinary conversation, but she seemed to think that my expecting answers to these sorts of questions was an enormous liberty. I was not at all the jealous possessive type, and she knew that. I even encouraged her to go out with her friends when I was working late. It simply did not make any sense for her to be secretive about such immaterial things, creating mountains out of molehills. Even if she had something to hide, she could easily have lied, and withholding such trivial information made me angry and hurt. Perhaps that was her intention? Who knows? There did not seem to be any plan, or rational motive for her secretiveness and withholding of information.



3. Uses People.


If there was any purpose to her flirting, it was to get the other students to write her essays for her.

During the first phase of seeing her there was a two-month gap. Then she called me up because she needed someone to help her move to a new flat, and also to look after her possessions whilst she went home to her own country for a few weeks to see her parents and her husband. I did quite a bit of running about for her. I made a round trip of over one hundred miles to help her move to her new flat, as well as lifting her furniture in and out. Whilst she was abroad I effectively wrote her dissertation for her. She was all over me then, emailing me from her own country to see how I was getting on. Even phoning my mobile from abroad to tell me how much she missed me. However, once the dissertation was completed she mysteriously cooled off! Then, finally, one evening I was ten minutes late picking her up from work, and this seemed to make her very upset. When we drove up to her flat she got out the car and went indoors without saying a word. It was after this happened that I resolved not to see her again, and indeed did not see her for two years. Exactly two years to the day, strangely enough.

One manifestation of her manipulativeness and failure to connect was that she used sex, or the promise of physical intimacy, to get me to help her. In this respect she seemed to show a lack of understanding of human (or at least my) nature. I loved her and wanted to do things for her for love’s sake. If I was due to get anything in return, it was not sex I wanted, but acknowledgment by way of consideration of my needs, - perhaps by cooking me a meal, - that elusive “connection”. On the evening when I helped her to move to a new flat, after we returned to her old flat, she allowed me to touch her breasts for the first time! I did not realize then, but I know now, that this epitomised her understanding of reciprocity. Most people don’t treat their own body as though it were a commodity to be traded; doing so is as profound an insult to their esteem as one can imagine, which is why few women become prostitutes. There is a taboo against treating one’s own body as a tradable entity. But this was how she regarded her own body, as a thing to be exchanged for favours. She flirted with other men and would use her physical charms, - she was very sexy and flirtatious, - to persuade them to help her. And she enjoyed driving men wild. But she didn’t just treat other people like objects, she also treated her own body like an object.

For her, relationships were all about power. She never even wanted me to do things for her for the sake of love, but instead she wanted me to do them because she had bullied me into doing them. She wanted me to do them not because I wanted to, but because she wanted me to. Power, manipulation, and transparently insincere flattery took the place of mutual affection, tenderness, and understanding.

When I would lose my rag with her, and tell her I had had enough, then she would grovel. Her groveling and flattery was transparent and crude, because her compliments were just as absurd as her criticisms. The first evening I was ever intimate with her was when I told her that I had another girlfriend and did not want to see her again. She flagrantly used sex to try to keep me. Revealingly, my threats did not induce her to try to connect with me, but only to try to manipulate me through flattery and sex.


4. Only Ever Thought of Herself.

She never, ever, did or wanted to do anything for me. She never, ever, considered my needs or wishes. She would never cook me a meal or even invite me into her flat, unless something needed doing, like fitting the curtains. She would always insist that I waited outside, and then she would come to my car. Eventually, I grew tired of this and insisted that she let me come in, and on one occasion I even persuaded her to cook.

I once gave her my mobile phone to hold. Within a minute, she had managed to drop it in the street twice.

I nearly always paid for our evenings out. To be fair, she occasionally paid for a meal or a cinema ticket, but usually only when I insisted.

She took it for granted that I would drive her here or there on various errands when I came to meet her. Of course, I was more than happy to be useful to her in this respect, but I was not shy of reminding her that she ought to be grateful to have a docile man like me attending her, otherwise I doubt that I would have ever received any thanks!

Reading this now, I realise that when it came to parting with money, and driving her on errands, I was not quite so compliant as at other times, although she invariably got her own way. Perhaps when one is asked to part with money or provide transport for errands then it is easier to notice that you are being used.



5. Lack of Meaningful Communication.

The unsatisfactory relationship we had with respect to physical intimacy was somewhat analogous to the one we had in those quiet moments when we talked together. In the same way that I wanted her to keep still and to relax when I held her in my arms, so I also wanted her to keep quiet and listen when I spoke to her. But it was never possible. There was a constant reluctance on her part to “give herself” to me, verbally or physically, to be receptive to my advances, to open up. There was some vacancy in her psyche that prevented her from connecting with me on any other level except the most barren and superficial.

I can never really remember having a joined up conversation with her. Dialogue was always adversarial. There was always some point of contention, something wrong with how I was behaving, always some way I had failed to show her sufficient respect or hadn’t acted appropriately in the circumstances. I tend to have a somewhat high opinion of my abilities, frankly, (although my abilities in choosing a girlfriend leave something to be desired!), so what she said was pretty much like water off a duck’s back, but it was relentless, nevertheless.

She never expressed any appreciation of what I was doing for her. A lot of the time she would criticise me. She loved to tell me I was stupid, or in some way abnormal. She wanted me to believe that people singled me out because I was especially stupid or eccentric. “Those kids are laughing at you because of what you just did”. Perhaps she was projecting her own feelings of inadequacy onto me.

I could never start a sentence about something that happened to me, or about something I was thinking. She was never interested in my experiences. In fact, I hardly ever talked about myself at all. Once again, at the time, I did not realise how unusual this was. Only subsequently, on more recent dates with other ladies, have I found that it is normal for me to be allowed to talk about myself, or the things that interested me. (I hope I am not a bore.) But with her this was never possible.

It is not entirely true to say that she only ever talked about herself. But most of her conversation was somewhat superficial, being to do with office or celebrity gossip. I did not mind this; in fact I found it rather amusing to listen to her prattling on about this or that incident at work. Yet I would wish that some of the time we could talk about things that were more serious, or more pertinent to our mutual future interests.


6. Enjoyed Hurting Me.

She would sometimes tell me rather intimate things about her previous liaisons, but would refuse to tell me commonplace, everyday things about her life. She would never let me take a photograph of her. I have met this in women before; some people have a phobia of having their photo taken, which one must respect. Yet she told me that she allowed other people to take her photo. She told me that she even allowed other people to use her camera. It was as though she enjoyed the thought of making me feel excluded and jealous. The more I told her that I loved her, the more she wanted to make me jealous and angry. I eventually realized that those occasions in college when she flirted with other students were also designed to make me jealous.

Indeed, it seemed that the closer I tried to get to her, the worse she behaved. During the second phase of dating her, after the two-year gap, I was more self-confident than before, as she had confided that she wanted to be serious with me. And as I no longer feared her rejection, I tried very hard to get close to her; tried very hard to draw her out. (I naively thought at the time that this would be possible.) But, perversely, in many respects her attitude and behaviour towards me was worse than during the first phase of dating her.




Intense but brief relationships.

She appeared to have been carried away by several brief relationships with a number of men. She told me that no man had stayed with her as long as I had.

Of course, she did not discuss these relationships with me. But her diary was littered with the names of students and co-workers whom she had known in the past, and loved and lost, all in the space of about three weeks! From reading her diary, it was clear that she imagined these relationships to be more significant than they really were. Yet she was too selfishly obsessed with her own desires and needs to ever have the generosity of spirit that would enable her to build a real relationship with any man. At least, she never revealed to me any potential to have a really close, loving union. So what powers of self delusion could lead her to think that these past relationships were so significant? I don’t know.


Phoney Declarations of Love and Affection.


Someone once told her that she “blew hot and cold”. This was very accurate. Her emotions were shallow and confused. She did not seem to be in touch with her emotions. She could not discover for herself how she was feeling, why she was feeling that way, and what was going to happen next. As a result, she could not establish any long term commitment or loyalty to anyone. The absence of genuine affection was reflected in some of her remarks.

She once said, early on in our relationship, that something I had done had left her “heartbroken”. But she sounded so phoney that, at the time, not knowing her very well, I did not know what was going on. Was she being ironic? But I knew even then that she wasn’t sophisticated enough for that kind of humour.

Once she declared that she had “loved” a particular man, but later when I reminded her she seemed surprised that she had said it and said that she never loved him at all.

At a later time she said that she “loved” me, which again sounded phoney, but by then I was too wise to her ways to take much notice. She once even told me that she wanted to marry me, yet more or less in the same breath she refused to tell me the name of the college where she was studying.

More than once she told me “I don’t love anyone”. This I could believe. I seriously wonder now whether she was capable of sincere love and affection.






Inability to examine own motives.

I know little about the ins and outs of clinical psychology. All I know about human personality is what we all know, because we share the same traits, to a greater or lesser degree, through sharing an underlying human nature. Yet I believe that an inability, or fear, to look inwards is at the heart of this personality disorder. Everything strange, everything irrational in my ex-girlfriend, is connected to her inability, or refusal, to focus her attention on her own desires and beliefs, to examine the workings of her own mind and to try to understand the reasons why she acts the way she does.

I questioned her on why she was not prepared to walk past the crowd outside the pub, but she would not talk about it. In fact, this question caused her to become strangely silent, as though she were hiding the reason, so that I thought the explanation must have something to do with me. (Again, we blame ourselves, in trying to make sense of their behaviour.) With hindsight, I believe that her actions were as much a mystery to her as they were to me. Yet, I could never get her to make any effort to see what was making her tick. I eventually learned that trying to get her to focus on her inner mental life was quite impossible and would always lead to an argument. Her spiritual life must have been so impoverished by this dysfunction. Examining one’s motives, asking ourselves what it is that makes us tick and drives us on, and what we really want out of life, is surely a crucial tool in our unending quest to become “all that we can be”.

One always imagines that other people’s minds function, roughly, in the same way as our own, so that their more puzzling actions are readily explained by some rational motive, which is clear in their mind but hidden from us, because they are keeping it secret. If we knew the hidden motive, we think, then everything would be explained. But this is an error; it is not always true even of people in robust mental health. Certainly, she did not have any connection with her motives; she never attempted to fathom the source of her behaviour.

Dancing in the park. Dancing and frolicking whilst listening to her MP3 player, it was as though she wanted to lose herself in her performance, to go into some kind of rapture. I was sitting under a tree, watching her, and, to tell the truth, feeling a little bit embarrassed, what with all the people about. I went to her and tried to do some physical activity with her, a simple game, that would give her energy a better focus, rather than just aimless jumping and running, but she would not calm down. It was impossible to get her to listen or to co-operate. It was as though she wished her mind to be in a whirl. Was she seeking an escape from unwelcome thoughts?








Lack of specificity and curiosity.

Not only did she never show any interest in my life, but she never seemed to take any notice of what was going on in the world at large. We never discussed current affairs. I saw her a few days after September 11th, but this event did not merit a mention. Only her own needs, or the shallowest celebrity chit-chat, or work gossip, seemed to occupy her mind the whole time.

She listened to pop music, the sort of stuff in the chart that is aimed at teenagers. Yet when I asked her about the bands she liked she did not appear to know the names of any, she just mentioned “Radio 1” (a UK pop station). But even I, with a healthy aversion to popular culture, know the names of a few pop groups. I think that she eventually mentioned a couple of names, but these were just names that sprang to mind, they were not singers or bands that she felt any kind of commitment to.

When I was taking her out to a restaurant one evening I noticed a classic Ford motorcar parked by the kerb. I have an interest in such things and crossed the road to take a look. She waited for me by the restaurant, but seemed to display a profound lack of interest in what I was doing. I know that a woman might have no interest in cars, but she should have been at least a little curious about me, and should have wanted to take an opportunity to discover something about my interests.

She liked to visit the cinema, but she only ever wanted to see films that were intended for children, families, or adolescents, such as “Alien Vs Predator”, or the latest Harry Potter effort. Perhaps the most sophisticated film we ever saw together was “Pearl Harbour”. She never wanted to see any of those romantic, relationship orientated films that are designed to appeal to women, such as “Pride and Prejudice”, or anything that grown up people might think would be a bit more interesting and rewarding. By the age of thirty, most people, especially women, want to watch films exploring adult themes, as well as family orientated Hollywood blockbusters. On one occasion she told me that she “really wanted to see the latest film with Kylie Minogue”.


Missed opportunities, through not behaving in her rational self-interest.

My ex-wife did not like her. Not because she had come between us, - my wife and I had already separated before I met my girlfriend. The reason was that my ex-wife could see that what she did made no sense.

Let us suppose my girlfriend had been a cold and calculating woman, who did not love me, but schemed and plotted, albeit in a constructive fashion. Well, she might manipulate, use, lie to and deceive me, to achieve her ends, - say a British passport, a job and security, and the opportunity to send money back to her family. But although she did indeed use, manipulate, lie, and deceive, her motives made no sense if we try to explain her behaviour as though she was acting in her own rational self interest. She apparently wanted to go out with me, wanted to be with me, in preference to anyone else, - and there were plenty of other men who would have dated her, indeed did date her when I was unavailable. She also told me she had reached an age where she wanted to settle down, and did not want to waste any more time. She complained that her life had not been going anywhere for years, her goals in life were as far off as ever. I was offering her a way of achieving her goals, and she had me eating out of the palm of her hand. I would do anything for her. Despite all this, she did everything in her power to turn me against her and to drive me away.

The students she flirted with in front of me, or went on dates with behind my back, were not by any means “good catches”. A cold and calculating woman in her position would have thrown them straight back in! This is not just my being jealous or big headed. The other students were foreign nationals from the Third World, and she would not have been able to improve her UK immigration status by marrying one of them. (Another, sensible lady from the same country as my girlfriend told me that a woman in her position would never entertain a man from such countries, which were just as poor as her country, if not poorer.) Furthermore, the other students were from different, somewhat insular cultural and religious backgrounds, with strong family loyalties and responsibilities, and, for them, marriage to her would have been out of the question. As one would expect with uneducated young students from abroad, they were unlikely to get a good job in the UK, own property, or put down roots. I was born in the UK, had a decent income, my own property, car, and I adored her. We would talk to each other on the phone for hours. Why jeopardize this relationship for the sake of a flirt with a student who had so little to offer her in the way of long term security and stability?


When I began seeing her again after two years apart, she told me that I was the only person that she could be serious with, and that she desperately wanted a baby. She told me that all her friends were with partners or married, and some had children, and that she could not return home to her own country because she had nowhere to live and no job to go to. She talked about being in earnest with me this time, and wanting to settle down. Sitting besides her, in my car, as she said this, I thought that all my Christmases had come at once. Yet, in the subsequent weeks and months, everything I suggested, so as to hasten the time when we could always be together, was pooh poohed. I told her that we could go to see a family solicitor to sort out her divorce, but she did not want to. I suggested that we went to see an immigration solicitor to see about her prospects of immigration on a visa that would enable her to work full-time and would give her greater security, but that was too much trouble. I suggested that I move in with her or that we got a flat together, but that was rejected. She did all she could to make me feel that our circumstances were hopeless. But what was the point, then, of spending so much time with me?

Her want of rationality, her refusal to introspect, her inability to connect, were all frustrating, yet also revealing. We imagine a person who thinks only of him or her self as likely to “get on” in the world, and we suspect that our conscience somehow gets in the way of our success. But here we have a case of someone who does not seem to experience genuine human emotion, or feel any concern towards others. One who doesn’t carry any of the usual “conscience” baggage around with her, yet who is seemingly unable to make sensible rational choices, incapable of acting in her rational self-interest. Pathological lack of feeling and concern for others seem to be linked with irrational actions and hasty and poorly thought out decisions. It is not that our emotions get in the way of our rationality, but that they are somehow integral to our rationality in ways difficult to fathom. The hypothetical lady I described earlier, the rational lady who might marry an English man, not because she loved him, but so that she can acquire citizenship, very often has people back home that she does love, - her parents, her brothers and sisters, maybe a child. She has a moral sphere, although its radius might not encompass her husband. But my girlfriend did not have a moral sphere, rather a moral point, - herself. Now, many people might imagine that she would be precisely the sort of character who would be capable of scheming to marry someone just for their money, or just to be able to stay in the country. But in fact her mind was so flawed by her pathological self-centredness that she was not capable of making any rational and coherent plans, even cold-hearted ones.



Vanity and obsession with youth.

One evening whilst we were going for a walk she asked me whether she looked her age. She wanted me to reassure her that she looked younger than she really was. It was not difficult to do this, sincerely, since she was young looking and could easily have been mistaken for a woman much younger than she was (thirty-one). She confessed to me that this was a major issue for her. She said that she wished that she could pass for a nineteen-year-old. We all wish that we looked younger, but she was contemplating the inevitability of ageing without any sense of perspective or humour. This will surely become an issue for her as the years take their toll.

Most of her friends and acquaintances were younger than her. Most were men, incidentally. She would go out for the evening with a group of young men from her work. She seemed to enjoy going out with groups of young men. Doubtless she craved the attention.

She was reluctant to spend money unless it was on travel, jewellery or clothes. When I started dating her again after two years apart, I was surprised that her quality of life, and her surroundings, were much the same as when I had known her before. Nothing had changed. Single, living alone. The furnishings in her rooms were clean, but neglected and impoverished. The curtains did not hang properly. She still owned the rather decrepit TV I had sold to her two years previously, which kept turning itself off. Now I gave her an equally decrepit portable CD player so that she could play some CDs in her flat. The fact that she had not improved her living environment might have been a consequence of her uncertain status as a foreign student, but I suspect that this wasn’t the reason, she was just too wrapped up in herself to take much notice of her surroundings.





Of diverse things done.

1. Crazy Behaviour.

This incident was as close to psychosis as she ever got. In one of my futile attempts to force a normal relationship, I went to the house she rented to look at one of the rooms that I was thinking I might be able to rent, so that we could live in the same house. I used the bathroom in her house and when I came out she accused me of using one of the tenant’s sprays. She insisted that she had heard a swooshing sound as though a spray was being operated. I could not believe that she was serious, argued with her, and finally walked out and drove away. A while later she phoned me up and I went back to see her. I cannot, to this day, understand what this was all about. Did she really believe in what she was saying, or was it just a desire to humiliate me? But no matter how compliant and submissive I might have been in the past, I would not countenance being silent in the face of accusations that were untrue. This was a turning point for me, because I began to realize that the fault for these confrontational episodes did not lie with me, and that she really could be crazy and delusional. I was beginning to learn I could never have a relationship with this woman. Imagine being married to her, never knowing what craziness was going to issue forth next!

2. Unreasonable demands

On one occasion I parked my car under a tree and had the misfortune to have several birds crap all over it. I had to pick her up from her workplace and intended taking the car to the garage to clean the mess off once she was on board. But she refused to get into the car until I had cleaned it, so I had to drive to the garage first, and when I returned she had taken the tube home.

Despite the fact that I routinely picked her up from work, she would never let me into her flat. Instead I would wait in the car whilst she took her things inside, and then we would drive to a restaurant. One day she told me that she might be an hour indoors, so I insisted that I be allowed to come in, and after that time she always invited me in. But I had to sit on a certain chair, and although I was often tired and very much wanted to lie down, I was never allowed to lounge on the bed. Eventually I bought myself a quilt that I lay across the floor. But it was never possible to spend a relaxing evening at her place. There was never any reciprocated touching and caressing. She was never gentle and affectionate in all the time that I knew her. Yet this was a woman who told me that she wanted to be serious with me and who at one time told me that she wanted to marry me.

At one point I found myself another girlfriend, but within a couple of weeks we had separated, and I wanted to get back with my first one. (This was a colossal mistake on my part, the other girl was divine, but she knew I had someone else on my mind.) Anyway, despite her supposed very high opinion of herself, she let me back into her life almost immediately. She would suffer more humiliation to keep me than would a more unassuming and reasonable person. She desperately needed me, perhaps because I was the only one she had found who would put up with her.

3. Control

She always wanted her own way about everything. I like to listen to Classical Music, she only ever wanted to listen to the most superficial and simpleminded Pop. Naturally, therefore, we always listened to Pop in my car. I even prepared a couple of cassette tapes with Pop music on them. But there was one occasion when the radio dial flipped onto Radio Three and they happened to be playing one of my favourite pieces of classical music. I told her that I wanted to listen, but she immediately switched the radio onto Pop. I surrendered, of course, but I was surprised at how badly this went down with me. This lack of regard was pushing me too far. If she did not care about me to that extent, then why on Earth should I carry on caring about her?

But it wasn’t just me that she tried to control. She lost her temper easily with her flatmates and her landlord, and could be very belligerent, what with shouting down the phone, if she thought they were taking liberties. I have no doubt that she had a reputation amongst them for being a bit of a battleaxe. She explained that otherwise, being a woman living on her own, with only temporary immigration status, they would try to walk all over her. And she was probably right. It appears that she was the same at work. Woe betide any tenant or work colleague who was foolish enough to think that they could take advantage of this little foreign lady! As a student with limited employment opportunities, she was wasted. Had she been able to do a job commensurate with her temperament and abilities she would have made a good captain of an unruly crew!

4. Nuts.

I was driving her somewhere one afternoon when she opened a packet of nuts. She refused to share them with me. I suppose that it was not the lunatic selfishness that made me lose my temper, but being reminded once again that there was never ever going to be the semblance of a normal relationship with her, when the sharing of a few nuts became a major issue.


I can no longer tolerate her superficiality and inability to connect.

The accumulation of episodes like those mentioned above made me increasingly angry and bitter. They brought home to me the fact that I was never going to be able to build a wholesome relationship with my girlfriend. I had finally exhausted all hope.

I could not visualize a time when our relationship would be normalized. It was impossible to imagine, for instance, ever being able to take her to meet my sister, or my mother, or to expect her to settle into ordinary domesticity. She was not open to a normal, loving relationship, with all its giving and taking. She expected me to bestow on her my devotion and servility but did not seem to realise that she had to give something back. She could not understand that, as much as I loved her, she must nevertheless give me some return on my investment. I waited and waited. One imagines that they are consciously holding themselves back, and that one day, - if you are patient, - one day the dam of pent up emotions, of true feelings, will finally burst and everything will come good. How else can we make sense of the things they do? But when was her reservoir of love and affection, that I had supposed existed, going to be discovered? Certainly not in my time. Or perhaps it did not exist after all.

There was also the issue of her crazy behaviour. I was older than she was, and whilst not necessarily wanting a totally placid and quiet wife, neither did I want one who was out of control. My first wife, although fairly easy-going, had suffered mental problems too, and I had no intention of burdening myself with a person like that again.

I loved my girlfriend, and would do anything to make her happy, but she could not reciprocate, it just wasn’t in her, - there was nothing I could do that would make her relate to me normally. Towards the end I was only taking her out because I believed that she would be lonely without me, and that I needed to look after her. I still loved her, but also realized that it was futile trying any longer to get her to be normal. I wished that some other man would come along to take her off my hands, although no one would put up with her irrational and destructive behaviour for long. She often told me how lonely she was. She had health issues that needed looking into. She had a messy separation from her husband that needed sorting out. Even her immigration status was uncertain and urgently needed dealing with. There was so much else in her life that wasn’t going anywhere, as well as our relationship. It got to the stage where I no longer took it seriously. I did not care about her anymore. I even wanted to hurt her as she had hurt me. But I could not desert her.

And because she was never remotely interested in how I felt, or what I was thinking, she did not notice or care about my seesawing emotions and my general cooling off. She just carried on in the same old way, or worse, (see below), little realising that I was looking for a way out. She wouldn’t tell me the exact date of her birthday, so I never bought her a present or a card, although I knew the date within a day or two. (She did not seem to mind!) I drove her to a specialist cake shop and she bought herself a big cake. How sad is that?


Physical Abuse.

But what finally did it for me was the evolution of her bullying into spiteful physical abuse. She started to pinch and to punch me, and it bloody hurt. She began doing it whilst I was driving, whenever I took a wrong turning. Then she started doing it when I was with her in her flat. Such behaviour was completely unacceptable to me; yet she never seemed to have any conception that people had lines that could not be crossed. Mean, violent abuse represented for me the final straw; coupled as it was with the ongoing and profound absence of genuine affection and tenderness, despite all I had done for her. I really did not care what became of her now. Finally, she punched me once too often in her flat and I decided to call it a day. I hurried from her flat, never to return. Yet, in spite of all her nastiness towards me that evening, when I told her I was leaving she clung on desperately to my coat.

Conclusion.

I wish I had known then what I know now. I believe that I could have done more for her if I had known about her condition.

Her own mind is a mystery to her, let alone anyone else. She does not understand why she acts the way she does, and is too scared to look inwards long enough to find out. She has a poorly developed sense of identity because she can’t, or won’t, examine her own feelings. And, for some reason, this profound lack of self-understanding is linked with an equally profound inability to feel any genuine emotion towards another human being.

She is, of course, to be pitied. For most of us, the meaning of life is revealed through our relationships, - through enjoying those connections that I described earlier. Because my ex-girlfriend is so preoccupied with her own selfish needs, she will never know what it is to love. And those most cherished and deeply felt feelings and responses that sustain us from day to day, and that define us as human beings, will be forever a mystery to her. I mentioned earlier that she once told me that “she doesn’t love anyone”, but this was perhaps spoken in despair, not triumph.

She was, for a long time, the Sun and the Moon and the stars to me. I loved her, and I forgave her for her shortcomings as much as (more than?) can reasonably become a man. It was a long, long time before I finally realised that nothing I could do would ever be enough, and even longer (after I stopped seeing her for good) before I learned that her demands were, indeed, the manifestation of a pathological state of mind. I wish I had known this at the time so that I might have been able to respond to her strange and destructive behaviour in a more appropriate and helpful way. At the time I thought that there was something wrong with me, I was trying to change my behaviour to suit her demands; I should have asked the question: What is wrong with her?

I wrote earlier that she seemed to be deluded in her thinking that her relationships were more meaningful and significant than they really were. But I was the same. Despite the obvious and pervasive signals being sent to me, by her speech and by her actions, to the effect that she did not care about me, I nevertheless persisted in my belief that just one last push was all that was required to get her to return my love. Even now, I need to convince myself that she was never the person that I imagined, and that I was just as deluded about our relationship as she was. Or perhaps it was that she fascinated me, but I was not in love with her. After all, how could anyone love a woman like that, unless they were sick in mind themselves?






Postscript.

A little while ago I visited my ex wife and I played a little game. I took two bananas from the fruit bowl and said to her. “This banana is called John, and this one is called Sally. They were on the same bunch on the tree, and whilst there, they grew to love each other deeply. They were together on the ship coming over here, and have been together ever since, even in the fruit bowl. But now they both realise that their time together is coming to an end, they are both becoming over-ripe, and shortly, either they will have to be thrown away, or else they will be eaten. But they would like to spend the remaining time they have, together in the fruit bowl.”

Then I placed the bananas on opposite sides of the table, far apart. And I asked my ex wife what she was going to do. Smiling, she immediately picked up the bananas and placed them next to one another.

I think that my ex wife’s response was a normal, healthy one. I would have felt compelled to do the same thing. My point is: It is hopeless for us to try to understand what goes on in the mind of someone with a personality disorder. We cannot conceive what it would be like to treat people as things; we have a hard enough time trying not to treat things as people!

I'm so sorry you had to go through this Ray.

Just about everything you said applied to my HPD creature as well.

They are all so alike its astounding really and no longer surprises me to hear similar stories to my own.

In anycase you're right about them fearing to look within themselves and this article may shed some light for you as to why that is.

http://www.operationdoubles.com/narc/in ... ?links.htm

Yes its a narcissism link but HPD is a Cluster B personality disorder and disorders in this cluster all share many many things in common.

Sam Vaknin believes HPD is NPD using sex and body to get Narcissistic Supply which is love, lust, admiration, adulation and attention whereas a sufferer of straight out NPD would use their mental abilities real or imagined to get their supply.

I agree with Sam.

So yeah again HPD is basically malignant narcissism using sex and body to get whatever these people want but HPD also shares many things in common with borderline personality disorder and Anti Social Personality Disorder sufferers as well as I've already said as these disorders are the rest of whats in the Cluster B of personality disorders.

KontrollerX wrote:
I'm so sorry you had to go through this Ray.

Just about everything you said applied to my HPD creature as well.

Yes its a narcissism link but HPD is a Cluster B personality disorder and disorders in this cluster all share many many things in common.

Yet there is a big part of me that says that I would not have missed knowing her for the world. When I look back on the most memorable times in my entire life so far (I am in my forties), then about 75% would have been days I spent with her.

It is so hard to believe that a person who seemed to be such a soul mate really felt nothing for me.

As for NPD. She did have issues in respect of delusions of grandeur too. I described how she would not get in my car when it was dirty. Also, she never, ever called me up. I always had to call her. She probably had some hang up about not wanting to seem (to herself) to be doing the chasing.

But no two HPD's seem to be exactly the same. They all have their quirks and eccentricities.

Dear Ray, I understand your struggles with this HPD woman. There is a book that will show you how manipulation works and like magic tricks, once you know how it's done it lose its effect.

This book does so good to us because it shows that some of us are really prone to manipulation. The people who are the easiest targets are usually weak people. This book shows how to get stronger as well.

Take a look:

Millions of people, both men and women, can become involved in relationships with manipulators--people who control through emotional manipulation, insults, and mind games. These "toxic" relationships erode self-esteem and make life miserable for the victim. Whether the manipulator is a relative, a spouse or romantic partner, a boss, coworker, or subordinate, or even a trusted friend or advisor, Dr. Harriet B. Braiker, bestselling author of The Disease to Please, shows you how to break this damaging cycle for good.

Who's Pulling Your Strings? will help you end a current destructive relationship, understand how it occurred--and prevent you from ever getting involved in a manipulative relationship again. Using revealing self-assessment quizzes, action plans, and how-to exercises, Dr. Braiker empowers you to:

Recognize the signs of a manipulative relationship
Spot manipulators and their typical ways of operating
Assess your own vulnerability to manipulation
Identify the 7 main "Head Games" manipulators play
Utilize effective resistance tactics against manipulator's efforts
Transform yourself from a "soft" to a "hardened" target
Extricate yourself from manipulative relationships that do not change
Protect yourself from falling prey to manipulators' control in the future
Stop others from pulling your strings once and for all!

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/007140 ... oding=UTF8

I hope it helps!

New Order, did you write that book? You seem spamming it alot....look pal, it isn't very encouraging, this form of advertising . Indeed, it's discouraging.

Ray, wow, this lady was quite a character....But I recognize a lot of my younger myself. When I was eighteen or twenties, I was quite like this, maybe a bit more reserved, but the sweet craziness and unkept promises were all there.

Please don't take me badly, but somewhere in your essay I recognize a sort of superiority feeling you had to her. Maybe deserved, after all you were her senior in many fields. But this is an obstacle to a true relationship; on the other hand, even if this sort of people clinges to who he/she perceives as superior, nevertheless he/she is incapable to fully relate to the superior person. It seems that she gave very little, and surely you deserve a lot better.

Now I'm near forty, and I believe we have to take people at face value; we are all different and with different abilities to give and to take: don't despise her, she was just being herself, I believe. If it is possible, let her go; her charm was unsplittably bundled with her drawbacks. As it's said in Emotional Vampires (very good book, imho) you can't have a Ferrari with the reliability of a Toyota. If you don't feel good in a relationship, just leave, it isn't more complicated than that. So I think you did the right thing.

best wishes, kj

Ray,

Nothing you said was trivial or banal.

I am 6 months out of a relationship with an HPD and it is only now that I am in a relationship with a healthy woman, that I really see the damage and how it happened.

At the time, it was always little things, the things that the HPD partner is at pains to depict as trivial but, nonetheless the things they create merry hell to get. And, of course, because they are so trivial you are wrong in not giving way.

Ray, since you brought this post up in the reply to Renton I re-read it and empathize w/your experience. Your HPD was full blown I'd say. Mine wasn't so extreme, and had more of the hypochondria issue and mixed other things(BPD, NPD and OCPD). The dancing in the park and the extreme flirtations are almost psychotic. Reminds me of a neighbor girl I met once...spit crazy and full of unbridled energy(yet on disability) Deluded(thought I was dating her b/f even though I am a gay female and told her as such many times)
She often 'disappeared' with men at most questionable times nad thought peopel were listening on her phone/breaking into her PC.

But yes, very good writing and summed up those small insidious things that a person on the outside looking in would just poo-poo and say..oh..well..get over it. But we who've been involved w/these peeps get it. KJacob here below you minimized it as girlish frivolity. No, even at 18 that kind of behaviour is disgusting, it's really more of a 5th grade mentality or younger. These are the women that give us all a bad name!!!!!!
==
So, that bird crap on the car incident was classic as was your story about listening to the classical song and she switched it. Mine would change topics in the midst of me being midsentence on a 'more serious topic' ..I also felt that I was oftern overtalked and drowned out when I'd bring up anything 'deeper' than the weather or ??????? food?
==
OK ..THanks Again Ray-

KJacob here below you minimized it as girlish frivolity.

i am so tired of these people who keep saying in their absolute ignorance that hdp doesn't exist or what have you. i honestly think that i would prefer the company of an hpd anyday to these ridiculous people. the woman described in ray's writing is an extreme hpd. she sounds like the woman i cared for a lot. i guess soon people will be discounting the existance of alcoholism or all the other emotional problems that exist. while we're at it let's say that depression is a frivolity, phobias, addictions...hey why not include all the disorders on this forum...none of them exist, they are simply frivolity.

that is what is so frustrating about hpd...it's not the people with it...it is those baffoons out there who not having intimate experiences with someone with hpd...who read about it and deny it's existance...and think that it is not real.

it is a disorder recognized by the psychiatric community. i and all the people here who have it and those here who have loved someone with it know it exists, so for all you who deny it's existance...get lost!!!!!!!!!

i hope you walk out the door tomorrow and run into someone with a 'full' blown case of it and i hope they target you and you fall for them. but, don't come here looking for sympathy. you can wallow alone in your self doubt and i'll be laughing in glee at your idiocy!!!! paybacks a b*tch!!!!

"i am so tired of these people who keep saying in their absolute ignorance that hdp doesn't exist or what have you. i honestly think that i would prefer the company of an hpd anyday to these ridiculous people."

Exactly.

Nevermind mylife, digital.noface, lostHPD and noinsight's great posts here saying they have HPD and it is a real disorder, some people would rather just wallow in their invincible ignorance and say its an imaginary condition imagined by the victims purely...

Also the invincibly ignorant ignore all the findings of professionals that have said it is a real disorder and one of the oldest humans have ever been afflicted with.

That's funny,me an you have something in common then.

i am so tired of these people who keep saying in their absolute ignorance that hdp doesn't exist or what have you. i honestly think that i would prefer the company of an hpd anyday to these ridiculous people.

I feel that same way about how some of these Cluster B PD's in there absolute ignorance attempt a theory of a melting pot in which ASPD is the main link. Crazy thing's like "extreme HPD" And an extreme HPD just like an extreme NPD is what?.....psychopathic?. That word has been tossed around quite a bit by people who dont understand it's meaning.

A few of us find this interesting and shrug it off, sort of just let people have there fun. So i suggest if someone hints HPD dosent exist you do the same.

I myself believe it's real it just sound's to me like more of a BPD thing then it's own PD. But hey, this is your field not mine so i wouldnt state such thing's. I could do as most people do and google a PD up real quick and read a few pages to familyerize myself then preach to you like i have a clue. But that dosent beat first hand experience. So forget about those people.

The difference between the other Cluster B's and HPD though is that there distinct. HPD come's across to most people as a spoiled brat who just hasnt come across the reason's why you dont play with fire. But of course it isnt so simple. It also seem's very hard to tell aHPD for someone with a chip on there shoulder. So many who say they are my infact not be.

So you wish for individual's who dismiss HPD as not existing or atleast not being a PD to incounter one and be crushed by one for that?.

Oh i agree payback is indeed a bitch. But what would the payback be for?.