Hi everyone,
I have been in a very turbulent relationship with a man for a year and a half now. I have broken up with him more times than I can remember and each time somehow he manages to turn it around so I am the one apologizing and then to give him another chance yet he doesn't really do anything to change his behavior. I am starting to think he has a PD. So does this sound like HPD?
1. When we first met he was in relationships with several different women while mourning the loss of relationship with his ex-gf. He did not disclose this to me.
2. He engaged in very promiscuous sexual behavior with prostitutes.
3. When I found out about this he cried and still maintains that if he were to tell me the truth about this in the beginning the relationship would have never happened. He said he was very sorry and that he maybe had a problem. Now he maintains he does not have a problem he is just hyper sexual.
4. He is emotionally entangled with women from his past. He keeps all their photographs, including sexual ones. He is still in steady contact with one with whom he has a child. The relationship is full of drama and apparently until we got together and actually at some point after he was still shagging her (albeit when we were not yet exclusive expicitly)
5. When we were in relationship, I caught him propositioning people on web-sites. He claims it was only for fetish purposes but how am I supposed to know?
6. He cheated on me when I started getting depressed that the relationship was essentially based on lies and as I perceived he was putting in very little effort into building it. I.e. he would almost never initiate plans, go out to breakfast by himself or go to a bar by himself rather than invite me. He said "you weren't giving to me what I needed, so I had to get it somewhere else".
7. And yet, he would hold me before we fall asleep every night, was very very affectionate almost like a child.
8. At first the sex felt very devoid of feeling and mechanical because it happened after he said "I don't have to sleep with you" and I thought why not, because:
9. He is extremely attractive physically. His body is perfectly sculpted but not in a gross square body builder way. He has a stunning face, he should have been an actor. His eyes are super intense that just radiate sexuality sometimes.
10. He can also appear very fragile, emotional and childlike (he is in his 30's).
11. He claims to love me and want a healthy relationship with me and uses tools like NVC to rip apart my communication so I have a hard time getting my point across and even words like "inconsiderate" are thrown back at me that I am being abusive.
12. He courts attention from women wherever he goes and picks up numbers as if he is making "friends". Then always has someone on back burner to give him attention.
Reading this in black and white, I obviously want to slap myself that I have been with this person for so long but he can be very sweet, super fun, yes charming, tender, attentive. He seems very apologetic and shamed about his behavior and yet he won't go into therapy and as soon as I seem willing to take him back, it goes to status quo as if nothing happened and he gets very angry and upset if I bring up his past behavior.
Does this sound like I am involved with an HPD person? I realize I am playing the co-dependent here perfectly and frankly I feel so numb right now I don't know up from down.
Thank you,
V