What just happened...?

Hey guys, I'm new to the forum and this is my first post so I apologize for the length. I found this forum in the last week of mine and my suspected HPD's relationship and what I read here hit me like a ton of bricks. Had I known what I know now, back the beginning I could have saved myself a TON of heartache, but anyway here's my story:

I always knew there was something ‘off’ about my now ex-girlfriend and it wasn't until I found this forum that I suspected she was HPD with some BPD traits. I’m now awaiting a hearing because she put a temporary restraining order on me for ‘stalking’ her. Now I’m no psychologist, but I’ll describe some of her behaviors that send red flags waving:

- From the first time we hung out she talked about her ex-boyfriends, one in particular who she claimed was abusive to her and a major jerk.

- When we met she had a boyfriend but insisted they really didn’t have a relationship, it made me pretty uncomfortable and I told her that I didn’t want to hang-out with her until she got things with her current boyfriend figured out.

- She invited me to her birthday party and insisted I come. When I showed up she was extremely intoxicated, and started to hang all over me with her current boyfriend 6 feet away! This upset me greatly and so I left, she chased me half a mile down a gravel road on foot.

- She finally cut ties to her old boyfriend and we became a couple a month later, things seemed good for the most part.

- Several months into the relationship we started having problems with her ‘abusive’ ex showing up and threatening to fight me, this happened several times over the course of our relationship, he was always a thorn in my side.

- I noticed even though she “despised” this guy she always talked about him in conversation, when I would point it out she would get defensive and claim they dated so long it was a part of her life yada yada

- Around the last month of our relationship we started to argue quite a bit and broke up/got back together several times.

- Things were getting bad and I tried harder and harder to salvage the relationship she became more distant she insisted she was just stressed and told me to just wait it out and she would get better.

- The week before Halloween there was a house party that I had planned on attending, however I over slept and didn’t wake up til 5 in the morning. I freaked out because normally she would come over to my place after a night of drinking.

- I went over there and found her car and her ‘abusive’ ex’s cars still there. I went and beat on the door; the guys who lived there answered and insisted they weren’t there. I talked to her later that day she claimed she stayed the night at her friends, which she did a lot of the time.

- A week later at a party where both of us where I asked her friend if she had stayed there last weekend, she said they were out of town, furious I confronted her about it and she took off.

- I left the party and called her, her ex answered the phone!! Very upset I go over to where they were (the same place as the party the week before ironically) and get in a fight with the guy in the front yard.

- I called her dad and told him what happened, then went to my house and smashed a guitar she decorated for me on my driveway and threw it on her driveway as well as some printouts from this website discussing HPD and highlighted and made notes of her behavior. I send her a very hateful text message then was done. Two days later I get served a restraining order at my work.

Some of her behaviors which led me to believe she was HPD:

- Very flirtatious towards other guys, especially ex-boyfriends, she keeps contact with all her ex’s
- Hyper-sexual, constantly wanting sexual attention
- She claimed she’d only slept with 4 other guys, I imagine that was a lie
- Would NEVER take responsibility for her actions
- Would always make things my fault even if she caused the problem
- She would always talk about how ‘#######5’ of a person she was and that no one would ever love her
- Her mood could flip like a switch at any moment, one moment she’s a sweetheart, the next a very mean person
- She would have severe depression that was on and off for no apparent reason
- She’d have anxiety/panic attacks when overly stressed
- She always talked about how ‘ugly’ she was even though she’s gorgeous
- She flirted with a teacher at her school who was always trying to get in her pants, she’d lead him on only to shut him down and got off on doing it
- She drank A LOT, her HPD traits went into overdrive when she drank
- She was very sensitive to criticism, but when I called her out on her criticism towards me she’d just say it was her personality and that she was just “joking” but that I was being “mean” when I said or did it
- She was the queen of double standards, she hated it when I got jealous but would get jealous if a girl even looked at me; she didn't like me drinking, but she could drink like a fish; she could talk to her ex’s but if I did I was cheating.
- She had some suicidal tendencies, she cut herself a couple times, and I’d also get snapchats of her sitting on a bridge looking down.
- When I tried to point out her behavior she couldn't understand why it made me feel that way, it’s like she lacked empathy

I remember a couple weeks before we ended she exclaimed how she was having trouble being attracted to me, sexually. It was over some old nudy pics she found on my phone. I now think she used this as an excuse to end the relationship. But I recall her saying "this always happens" and what I think is she was referring to the constant idealization/devaluation she put her boyfriends through.

On the flip side, she was very charming, outgoing and very intelligent. She was top of her class, had several debate trophies, drama club etc. She wasn't materialistic, never asked me to buy her things, was very good with her money, always held a steady job and always dressed conservatively and was a church goer. But I now believe this is all a very well crafted facade of hers. She IS EIGHTEEN but I’ve never seen these traits in an 18 year old before.

Sorry for the long post. You guys have any ideas/thoughts?

Hi..

as you probably can attest, we're not psychiatrists, and are not qualified to give you a diagnosis.

Also, while I understand the need for closure, if this is your ex-girlfriend, I feel that with this degree of detail there really is no chance of closure unless you completely emotionally detach from this. I read your post, and I would say the only concerns that I have is what you would consider her exploitativeness and lack of empathy. Those can indeed be traits of the more pathologic histrionic. I tend to not pay a whole lot of attention to the hyper sexualized concerns, because I do believe that a lot of that is based on sexism and gender role discrimination. I realize that it is my bias, and I will state that. However back to you:

if what you have described in your post is accurate, as I have no reason to believe it is not, it does sound like she does have traits of histrionic personality disorder. Cut your loses and move on.


Best

TW

StraightToHell wrote:You guys have any ideas/thoughts?

Chalk it up to lessons learned. Quite a long list of concerns from my perspective. Be on the look out for similar red flags in the future. I've been out of college for almost 20 years now and looking back on my life, I wasted a ton of time trying to make relationships work with the wrong women. That's the beauty of experience. Eventually red flags stick out like a sore thumb, and you can save yourself lots of time and heartache. There is someone out there who is right for you. Keep moving forward and pat yourself on the back for not making even worse decisions (i.e. getting her pregnant and then later find out she tried to get a restraining order to prevent you from seeing your own children, and yes that happened to me).

Ultimately, you are in charge of your life. Protect your heart.

I think it is very important for you to focus on some things that might be wrong with you, and not just obsess over your ex's possible personality disorder(s) and other issues. I don't mean this in an accusatory sort of way, but rather I mean it as in your own behaviors and thinking caused you to really put yourself through a ton of nonsense.

StraightToHell wrote:
- From the first time we hung out she talked about her ex-boyfriends, one in particular who she claimed was abusive to her and a major jerk.

It's always a bad sign when a potential new dating partner constantly talks about their ex. This is a big red flag that you ignored. Why did you ignore it?

StraightToHell wrote:
- When we met she had a boyfriend but insisted they really didn’t have a relationship, it made me pretty uncomfortable and I told her that I didn’t want to hang-out with her until she got things with her current boyfriend figured out.

This was another big red flag that you ignored, but again, why did you ignore it? I think it's important for you to figure out why you ignore giant red flags, because you need to be more respecting and protective towards yourself. At least you did set one boundary here in refusing to hang out until she settled the matter.

StraightToHell wrote:
- She invited me to her birthday party and insisted I come. When I showed up she was extremely intoxicated, and started to hang all over me with her current boyfriend 6 feet away! This upset me greatly and so I left, she chased me half a mile down a gravel road on foot.

Oh gosh another big red flag. This is a lot of red flags here and you ignored them all??? That is what I mean, something about how you were perceiving and approaching this situation was off.

StraightToHell wrote:
- She finally cut ties to her old boyfriend and we became a couple a month later, things seemed good for the most part.

This is called a rebound.

StraightToHell wrote:
- Several months into the relationship we started having problems with her ‘abusive’ ex showing up and threatening to fight me, this happened several times over the course of our relationship, he was always a thorn in my side.

I think when someone threatens you with violence repeatedly, that is way more than a thorn in one's side. You seem pretty laid back and passive about it, though, in the way you describe it as a thorn. It's a very serious thing when someone is threatening you with violence.

StraightToHell wrote:
- I noticed even though she “despised” this guy she always talked about him in conversation, when I would point it out she would get defensive and claim they dated so long it was a part of her life yada yada

So why did you put up with her constantly talking about her ex. Pointing it out to her but never refusing to listen to it anymore just opened you up to more emotional barbs.

StraightToHell wrote:
- Around the last month of our relationship we started to argue quite a bit and broke up/got back together several times.

Why did you keep getting back together with her? There's a bunch of red flags and she's obviously using you as a rebound, but you kept taking her back. Why?

StraightToHell wrote:
- Things were getting bad and I tried harder and harder to salvage the relationship she became more distant she insisted she was just stressed and told me to just wait it out and she would get better.

Oh gosh WHY? Why were you trying to salvage a relationship as crazy as this one? Why were you will to "wait it out" as well? Is there something deeper in you that fears being alone or being rejected? You were putting up with a bunch of crap and trying to save it.

StraightToHell wrote:
- The week before Halloween there was a house party that I had planned on attending, however I over slept and didn’t wake up til 5 in the morning. I freaked out because normally she would come over to my place after a night of drinking.

Yeah I can imagine by this point you probably would freak out pretty easily. It's a bad sign, though.

StraightToHell wrote:
- I went over there and found her car and her ‘abusive’ ex’s cars still there. I went and beat on the door; the guys who lived there answered and insisted they weren’t there. I talked to her later that day she claimed she stayed the night at her friends, which she did a lot of the time.

- A week later at a party where both of us where I asked her friend if she had stayed there last weekend, she said they were out of town, furious I confronted her about it and she took off.

If you find yourself playing detective like this, something is very, very wrong with the relationship. At that point figuring out who is to blame can wait. The more pressing matter is that you've been driven to the point of playing detective and going nuts.

StraightToHell wrote:
- I left the party and called her, her ex answered the phone!! Very upset I go over to where they were (the same place as the party the week before ironically) and get in a fight with the guy in the front yard.

So then it came full circle and you became the angry, violent ex showing up and threatening to fight, eh? Gee wiz. Why in the world would you jeopardize your own legal record and safety to fight for a woman who causes you this much grief? How in the world was she worth it?

StraightToHell wrote:
- I called her dad and told him what happened, then went to my house and smashed a guitar she decorated for me on my driveway and threw it on her driveway as well as some printouts from this website discussing HPD and highlighted and made notes of her behavior. I send her a very hateful text message then was done. Two days later I get served a restraining order at my work.

Why did you call her dad? What did he have to with your private romantic relationship? Smashing things on your driveway is pretty crazy behavior, honestly. Sounds like your anger was terribly dysregulated and out of control. But in ALL of this it doesn't look like you ever asked yourself, "What the hell is wrong with me that I care so much about this toxic, dysfunctional relationship enough to fight people and smash things?" and instead you were just obsessing over whatever might be wrong with her.


So look, I can see that you're a victim here, and I'm not blaming you for anything your ex has done (that would be ridiculous). But I'm asking you to seriously think long and hard about what on earth has been up with you through all of this, because I don't want you to have to go through all of this again.

Copper,

All valid points you make and it is still baffling me how my judgement was so clouded with this particular relationship. It was an anomaly, it had never happened before so I wasn't prepared for it. Hindsight is 20/20 they say.

CopperMoon wrote:It's always a bad sign when a potential new dating partner constantly talks about their ex. This is a big red flag that you ignored. Why did you ignore it?

CopperMoon wrote:This was another big red flag that you ignored, but again, why did you ignore it? I think it's important for you to figure out why you ignore giant red flags, because you need to be more respecting and protective towards yourself. At least you did set one boundary here in refusing to hang out until she settled the matter.

CopperMoon wrote:Oh gosh another big red flag. This is a lot of red flags here and you ignored them all??? That is what I mean, something about how you were perceiving and approaching this situation was off.

I've ran into red flags before, one's similar to even these, where'd I recognize them and get out pronto. But with her, her tactics, her manipulation were so clever and subtle it blows me away to think she had me completely fooled. Anytime I would confront her on her behavior she would either downplay it, try to convince me that it was all in my head, or somehow reverse it to make it MY FAULT. The sad part is I bought it most of the time.

CopperMoon wrote:Why did you keep getting back together with her? There's a bunch of red flags and she's obviously using you as a rebound, but you kept taking her back. Why?

CopperMoon wrote:Oh gosh WHY? Why were you trying to salvage a relationship as crazy as this one? Why were you will to "wait it out" as well? Is there something deeper in you that fears being alone or being rejected? You were putting up with a bunch of crap and trying to save it.

I've thought about this a lot. When I was young, three years old, my mother left my father for another man. This relationship all but confirmed to myself that I do have some rejection/abandonment issues that I need to deal with. I let my needs take the back burner for her antics..maybe I have some co-dependency issues too.

CopperMoon wrote: Smashing things on your driveway is pretty crazy behavior, honestly. Sounds like your anger was terribly dysregulated and out of control.

CopperMoon wrote:So then it came full circle and you became the angry, violent ex showing up and threatening to fight, eh? Gee wiz. Why in the world would you jeopardize your own legal record and safety to fight for a woman who causes you this much grief? How in the world was she worth it?

Because I was angry. I don't think anger is an un-natural emotion to feel/have Cooper. I was duped, deceived. I had invested so much time and energy in this girl and it all turned out to be a lie. I had to bury my grandmother five hours after the fight. I was mad. I was mad at her, I was mad at the "ex", but mostly I was mad at myself for allowing someone to get so close only to pull one over on me, to make myself emotionally vulnerable while completely ignoring the red flags waving two inches from my face. I was feeling a lot of emotions at once. Do I regret going over there and knocking his block off? Absolutely not. There are some things the courts can't solve. Sometimes you have to be a man and stand up for yourself. The whole relationship I'm thinking "Calm down, he's not worth it, it's not worth going to jail..." after all this I felt I had nothing to lose. It was amazing all the pats on the back and 'atta boys' I got from others for DOING what they always WANTED to do to him but never did. The guy was a real 'Biff Tannen' a bully, a punk. It was an exclamation point to a terrible relationship. She wanted me to join her 'fanclub' and I showed her I had more dignity than that, a nice little "FU" to her.

She's slowly crumbling, her dad is starting to see through her crap (that's why I called him, we always had a good relationship and he knew I was good for her and he despised her ex, and I wanted him to hear my side before she distorted it into oblivion). Now she's playing the victim, "poor me, I'm all alone" card and nobody's buying it anymore. Her facade is crumbling and she has no one to blame but herself. I won't make the same mistake twice. Maybe she'll learn her lesson, but from what I've read her, she probably won't. She'll probably burn every damn bridge she has that she'll have to skip town and start over elsewhere and burn more bridges. She leaves a path of destruction where ever she goes with absolutely zero remorse. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Hey StraightToHell,

Arguably your post really belongs over in the SOF&F forum here, where you might have gotten somewhat different replies, though even so, ultimately it does come down to you couldn't have changed her, but there is an opportunity for you to learn something about yourself.

Looks like you already starting to see more clearly