Trying to let go

(sorry guys for the copy... I'm a newbie here)

Hi all,

I've been searching for a while trying to find some stuff on partners or ex-partners of people with HPD. I'm so glad I came across this place where it seems like everyone is saying so much stuff which is very similar to my experience with my HPD ex-girlfriend.

I left her because she was manipulative, plays mind games, shows anger and volatility when she doesn't get her own way, is extremely possessive and clingy and jeolous. I didn't know that she had HPD when I left her ... I just couldn't handle the constant "look at me ... I'm a victim, and YOU'RE the monster" attitude anymore. I left her in November 2005.

The way I found out she has HPD was in February. I did some searches on the net about Phantom Pregnancy. When we started dating, she told me she had a phantom pregnancy about 9 years prior. She was in a horrible marriage which amazingly lasted 23 years!! She did tell me though she did have affairs in the past with guys she worked with .... even her husbands brother. Never did she ever say it was her fault .... rather she said had the affairs (including the affair she had with me) because she was looking for the love she wanted, because her husband didn't seem to care about her anymore and paid her no attention. (Surprise surprise!!! hey) I started to wonder what the psycological inferences were with a Phantom Pregnancy and found that women who have a PP are likely to suffer from HPD. All of the symptoms described on numerous websites fitted her exactly. Some symptoms in varying degrees compared to other symptoms .... but all there none the less.

Where I'm at now is I have tried to ignore her attempts to communicate with me (last 5 months) as I fear she will try to get us back together. If I give in to her attempts, her shallow charm and shallow attempts at empathising with me will be used by her to try and suck me back in. I know that my gentle and caring nature will be of no match for her ... but I know I would love to say to her "I know the reasons why I left you, you know the reasons I left you, and I know that you haven't been honest to your family about those reasons!"

You see, after I left her, I spoke to her mother on Xmas Eve to wish her a happy Xmas. Her mother proceeded to tell me that she thought she was a better judge of character!

Also I ran into her sister and her sisters husband about January. The vulgar look of utter hatred and contempt they both gave me was disgusting. I knew for sure then she had at the very least not told her family all of the truth about why I left, and perhaps made up some stories about me.

I know that if I confronted her on this level she will use the opportunity to go back to her family, twist it all around and say something like "I saw him the other day and he said I was a liar... can you imagine how that made me feel mum?"

I know now in my head she has the HPD and all the traits that go with it. Sometimes I feel guilty for leaving her, sometimes glad .... maybe if I had known then what I know now, I could have persevered ... maybe. Sometimes I think maybe I still love her ... I'm not really sure.

I now feel so confused, I don't know how to handle her if and when I bump into her or her family on the street. I don't know if I should ignore them and keep walking, be polite and just say hi and keep walking, or if I should engage in conversation. I keep trying to imagine what I would say and find that my compassion for her disorder fuels my dissappointment at having loved someone that sabotaged the promise of a lifelong relationship..... or were we just always doomed from the start?

Sounds like your HPD is the variety that does character assassination.

Also yes your relationship was very doomed from the start due to her HPD.

As for the family believing her lies?

Not surprising.

Sociopaths have a way of making lies look true.

Basically what I would do in your situation is simply ignore her attempts at contacting you and her families hatred with politeness or indifference if you are forced to interact with them.

The HPD is clearly painting you to be the bad guy so to react with anger to her fully deceived family is giving them the bad guy that she created for them in you.

You are not this man and can only destroy her scheme by acting the opposite way of how she has portrayed you.

Other than that though do the best you can to get all of these people out of your life.

They are poison to you.

The family didn't bother to hear both sides of the story they just blindly believed her and though that kind of loyalty is admirable it can also be dangerous to be so close minded and accept only one side of a story as its possible truth.

P.S: Most of the people with PD's and manipulators in general control you through guilt so do not allow yourself to be guilt tripped into getting back with her.

P.P.S: Also I'm sorry to tell you this as I know it must be painful but your entire relationship was a lie. She wasn't the person she presented to you and the whole thing was the result of a need she had (ie attention, love, sympathy, a father figure to listen to her, etc) and she would do anything to fulfill it. At no time was there a genuine effort to connect with true intimacy and if you felt that it was just on your end ie it was all in your mind and she clearly did her faking job (I'm a normal person) well.

I found out that my (ex) girlfriend was cheating on me. I confronted her and at first she cried and said she is sooo sorry. But then she became very angry and blamed me that I was spying on her and had no trust on her!!!

We broke up, but I felt confused and tried to find out what had actually happened. I thought that perhaps it was my fault, but I couldn’t understand how. Then I discovered about HPD and all the symptoms matched her behavior.

This was long time ago. I have had no direct contact with her since then, but I recently found out that her life continued the same way. She is still having affairs, and it is always the guy to be blamed for the eventual break up.

So, Mr MyBrainISMelting, you were unlucky and fell on a trap. The best you can do now is to have no contact with her, and just be polite to everyone else. If you feel comfortable with some of her friends or relatives, you may try to explain to them about HPD. But don’t be upset if they don’t believe you. Often, lies from HPDs sound more real than the truth!...

Also, try not to be too harsh to your next girlfriend (when you get one).

My marriage broke up 4 years ago, this was for a number of reasons, the biggest being that my ex-wife had an affair. She is not HPD or anyother sort of PD, but believe me her family believes i am the biggest piece of $#%^ on the face of this planet; cause i gave up on the marriage.
So what!! I can live with that. They are clearly gonna support their daughter/sisters feelings in the breakdown of our marriage. Wouldn't you if it was your daughter/sister?

The HPD i was with believe it or not tried contacting me for a nearly another 15- 16 months.
This was the last relationship i had before my marriage.
She even told friends of mine that she would be at the church on my wedding day, that she was gonna stand up in church and say that she was pregnant by me and was still seeing me. She wasn't pregnant and wasn't seeing me either.
My brothers stood guard just in case. I have it on good authority that she waited at the church she had been fed falsely where it would be. It's funny that i have only realised lately that she was HPD, at the time 15 years ago wno knew what a HPD was. I never ever thought about her until i had a converstaion with my G/F; and she suggested that my ex-looney was suffering from this awful condition.
KX is correct about the character assassination.
Nothing like a womens scorn (or worse a HPD's) lol.

She is contacting you because you don't want her; she wants your attention, it's the more you don't want her the more she wants you $#%^. If you started chasing after her she would use you for a while then bugger off until she wanted you again.
This is the Narsasistic bit to the HPD personality. Control and safety, margin for error. That means she can ###$ you around and mess you up but knows she will be able to come back after a little while and say sorry honey cause i love you.

You say you broke up with her last nov, well that is 6 months now. Other relationships that breakup for this length of time are deemed over. Get yourself a new girl and start your life again. Guest is completely right about this. If she manages to weedle her way back into your bed, god help you.

Funny though a fellow poster pointed out on here a while ago that HPD's cannot retain long relationships. There's or mine couldn't but yours had a 23 year marriage. Blimey. Thats something to ponder.

Good luck Jamo

Firstly, let me say thanks for the replies .... they have been very helpful. Cheers!!

From what I have read on this forum, there are some differences in all the HPD's going around. The basic theme is there (DSM-IV's list of 8-10 signs of a HPD) with all of them, but how they seek and get the attention may be slightly different in each case. Also there are different forms of attention. With mine it was:-
i) family & friends driven (looking for acceptance and allies when she blames the man she is with because of his "poor" treatment of her) and,
ii) male partner driven (looking for unrelenting "love", affection, reassurance, caring, sympathy, support ... whatever) ... all in order to make her feel better about herself and her own insecurities.

With my ex, she obviously suffered from massive insecurity. I know that one of those reasons behind this is because (she told me this) her father had a photo only of her in her wallet when she was a teenager and he proudly used to show this photo to the boys at his work. Her take on that was NOT because his other kids are probably not oil paintings or Paris models, but rather she felt that the only way he could be proud of her was because of her good looks, not her intelligence or character (as opposed to her not so attractive brothers and sisters who became professionals in their chosen fields). This made her feel worthless as a member of the family and felt she was only seen by her father as a non-academic no hoper and that only her good looks would get her anywhere in life.

I'm NOT saying that was what HE actually believed ... just that it was HER take on it. I believe this was the start of her "look at me, I'm a victim" stage.

When she got married at the age of 21, her and her husband had a child within the first 2 years. As I said in my post, she had affairs early on in the marriage. Her way of getting attention is by playing the victim role. She told her family that the only reason she had these affairs was because she wanted "real love" because he didn't pay her any attention anymore, didn't love her anymore, he abused her emotionally ... blah blah blah.

So the way she gets her family's attention is by staying in a "failing" relationship ... all the time stating that she is "obviously so loving and loyal" (while at the same time having all these affairs) .... and why I hear you ask.... so she can prove to her father and mother, (who have been now married for 50 years), and her brothers and sisters, that she is not a failure and can at the very least have the love and loyalty and "guts" to say in such a disasterous marriage.... hence getting the sympathy and attention from her family.

By her actually staying in the failed marriage, (she probably turned him into the alleged A-hole because of her HPD) she lived her life with him in the ultimate lie so she can say "I'm so loving and loyal, and you treat me like this."

To her family, this validates the affairs she has (which they condone) and they actually encourage her to leave him, which she doesn't do for many years .... why?? .... this ensures her constant supply of attention and sympathy from her family.

Then she meets me, a caring kind of guy whom she discovers has not had a relationship for 5 years and a soft spot for her terrible marriage. Thats when she started on me. Being very seductive even though I didn't want a part of it because she was married. I was telling her that if there was any chance we could be together, she would have to sort out her marriage first. She was relentless in getting my attention and started to turn up the heat by telling me that her husband tried to commit suicide because of our friendship. This made me feel sorry for her and so the trap had been set. All her stories started coming out, hence increasing my sympthy for her ... drawing me in.

All this to ensure that she had me waiting in the wings so she could fall into an instant relationship and not miss a beat in continuing the "male partner driven version" of the cycle.

Needless to say, it didn't take long for her attention getting and possessive antics to start on me. Always playing the victim, always twisting events around into making her look like she was hard done by, always making me feel guilty if I ever went for a beer with the boys (which for the record was only about once every 3 weeks for 2-3 hours). All of this to make sure that I paid full attention to her at all times, to drastically reduce contact with my friends, to spend less time on my (now failed) business. If I had stayed, I'm sure our relationship would have gone down the same path as her marriage.

One of the last times I spoke to her (mid Feb) she told me she had seen 3 blokes and had sex with all of them since New Years Eve. She then proceeded to tell me that they didn't arouse her like I did. Jesus Christ .... now we start to see the HPD in her that so many of you have described.

I now think that the suicide story re: her husband was a lie just to suck me in. When she told me about it I encouraged her to go immediately to her family, her loving support network of family that knew her better than anyone else on the planet, after all I had only known her for about 7-8 weeks at that stage. She said that there was no way she could tell her family ... she didn't want them to know ... I had alarm bells but gave her the benifit of the doubt.

She did eventually tell them about the suicide, but only after she left her husband. She must have realised there was a distinct possibilty that I would talk to them about it, or at least mention it ... so she didn't want to get caught out.

Sorry about the length of this one ... I feel like I needed to vent.

I had an experience with an HPD as well. If you wanna chat about your experience and share insights and tips, email me at: the_kashmann@yahoo.co.uk