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Emotionally draining:

The partner of an HPD sufferer spends all their time trying to make the relationship work for no gain. They're the one making all the concessions, apologies, and accomodations for a partner who is not only not contributing, but actively manipulating them.

Wow, Damon, I didn't realise how difficult this question would be to answer.

To simplify the explanation, let's say that emotional energy (ee) levels are equivalent to emotional states, when you have high ee levels, you are delighted, happy, contented etc and when you have low ee levels, you are angry, sad, frustrated, depressed etc.

When you interact with another person, emotional energy flows from the person with the higher ee level to the person with the lower ee level to eventually reach an equilibrium. So if person A was ecstatic and person B was feeling cynical, the ee levels may balance out so that person A felt merely contented and person B felt a little more hopeful.

In the normal course of things, people's ee levels change all the time, and their status as the person with the higher or lower ee levels would also change. So when you feel blue, your friends might come round to cheer you up and vice versa.

Cheering you up when you feel blue is one of the best gifts a true friend can give you because they are giving of themselves and their emotional energy to make you feel better. They are effectively making themselves a little sadder to make you a little happier.

The problem with HPDs (yes, we are finally getting to the point) is that this interaction is one way only. Because HPDs like to turn their lives into soap-operas, their lives are always excessively dramatic and they are just about always sad or depressed or frustrated or angry because you know, they're the helpless, hapless victims. And they constantly want your reassurance because this is a form of the attention they crave. And so they drain you of every drop of good feeling you have till you feel physically exhausted and emotionally numb, not happy, not sad, just numb. What I find scary in my experience, is that too much exposure to an HPD actually leaves you so drained that you can't even work up the appropriate emotion when something genuinely important occurs in your life.

The other thing with HPDs is that even when they're not in obviously low emotional states, they constantly want to be the centre of attention and paying someone attention is another form of energy drain. It's probably not as obvious and as large a drain as having to reassure a weeping, wailing HPD, but after a couple of hours in their presence, it compounds so after a night spent in their company, you feel strangely flat and a little depressed.

Finally, if the HPD is really getting her fangs into you, then she will embroil you directly in her drama by playing games and manipulating behind the scenes to create whatever climax she is looking for; if this is the case, then not only will you feel drained or depressed, you are likely to feel totally manipulated, frustrated, outraged, confused and stupid.

Hopefully that answers your question...

Agreed.

Its getting added.

Racer_X wrote:Emotionally draining:

The partner of an HPD sufferer spends all their time trying to make the relationship work for no gain. They're the one making all the concessions, apologies, and accomodations for a partner who is not only not contributing, but actively manipulating them.

Here here to everyone's postings, and especially this one of Racer's. Think of how much energy (emotional and otherwise) it takes to try to resolve a really big, really upsetting problem in your relationship. Your partner is not trying to resolve anything, and you have to put enough energy into it for the both of you. Now imagine that nothing ever really gets resolved, and new really big, really upsetting problems are cropping up all the time. You try your best to keep on top of everything, convincing yourself that if you just try hard enough you can make these ridiculous problems go away, that you can make this intelligent person show a glimmer of reason. But the thing is, no matter how hard you try, or for how long, the ridiculous problems do NOT go away, and in fact keep multiplying! You soon find that every ounce of emotional energy you can muster is being spent on futile attempts to fix the relationship. Never mind your self-esteem; that had to take the back seat a while back. It's hard to admit defeat, but the reality is that defeat is the only possible outcome. Either defeat in that you lose the relationship, or defeat in that you stay in the relationship but lose yourself.

My HPD would ask my opinion on things in such generality so she could make up an outcome that would be all wrong. What does this mean? She would lie about how my advise effected her. When I finally said I need more, and questioned her questions, this became difficult for her. I being a caring person towards her wanted all the information possible to give the correct answer. THE CORRECT ANSWER WAS NOT WHAT SHE NEEDED, WHAT SHE NEEDED WAS TWISTING MY BRAIN WITH CRAP ABOUT HOW MY ANSWER WAS WRONG. This is how my HPD drained my brain.

KontrollerX wrote:Agreed.

Its getting added.

KontrollerX, have seen these two sites which I had not seen before. They have some new info which I had not seen before on web sites.
Not sure about their sticky value, but they do seem interesting.

http://www.minddisorders.com/Flu-Inv/Hi ... order.html
http://www.clevelandclinic.org/health/h ... index=9743