Relationship hopping?

I agree some in what Newtohpd is saying.

I don't agree that HPD is always going to get depressed. Maybe I just don't have that about myself that would get me to depressed. Don't get me wrong I have blah days like anyone else, but I can't really say that I actually get depressed.

Now my biggest thing about such as with my husband when he "so kindly" points out my flaws, is that I can't stand him to be disappointed in me. I am not the pleasing, yes dear kind of woman and he knows that. But he KNOWS that I don't like for him to be disappointed or upset with me. And when I say "so kindly" this is a joke he and I have that he doesn't really have that nack about him to be able to kindly say anything to anyone. He just blurts it out and it comes across as really being a jacka$$. But, he knows this so it isn't just me being HPD or being defensive. He just states it like it is and whatever happens happens. Well I am this way to an extent, but try not to ever put him down when I want him to know that he has flaws. Sometimes he gets me mad enough and the darts start flying with oh, well, we can't all be like your mother, or you act just like your father, or my father.... etc. Hey, that happens in the healthiest of relationships. So we aren't so bad off.

But, again I agree that the reason "we" hop (not me in many years) is because that person gets to know too much about us and it does "scare" us. Not in a scary way, but being intimate makes us uneasy and to exposed. We can't and DON'T trust that the other person is not going to hurt us so we keep the walls up. But that other person tries and tries to bring those walls down and sometimes it works, and then we freak out and we run.

We like that "first love" stuff of always being close and complimenting and missing each other, etc. because that feels good all of the time. You don't discuss lifes issues or bills or jobs or kids, etc. It feels good and we like it. Most probably don't get to a deeper love that is so much better than it was in the beginning. I fear intamacy a lot and would get weird and I fought through it and I am way better and do enjoy that. Through ups and downs we have been married 16 years and 1 year of dating before that and getting better as we age.

Thanks, and Happy New Year to all...
S

Scarlett,

As usual your post provides me with a new insight.

I think I reasoned a bit too much from a "healthy" person's perspective - resentment leading to depression and mistrust. I guess your assessment of depression not being there always, is a valid point. Mistrust though (as you rightly pointed out) has more to do with breaking down an HPD's walls and therefore exposing too much of themselves. I can see how that must be weird and uncomfortable for them and might lead to fear of being hurt and/or abandoned.

You are right that for an HPD ( and I can see it in my X) remaining in the "first love" state of infatuation and romance seems really nice and building deeper intimacy might not be easy. (Ofcourse I know that you are actually very self-aware and not many HPDs might reach your state). I realise that breaking up of walls and the loss of "first love" can lead to hopping, in the hope of recapturing that "first love" state and the comfort of having the walls up again - this must be the secure, comfortable state that an HPD seeks.

Deeper attachment that comes form breaking down walls and exposing one's true self must be unknown and therefore difficult and mistrustful for an HPD.

Hello New,

Yes, it is very scary and not easy for an HPD to let anyone in. We leave ourselves vulnerable for being hurt, even though it appears as though most of the "admirerers" would not leave or hurt us if we beat them with a stick, but in our minds we can't take that chance, therefore we hurt before getting hurt. again I am using relative "we". I was this way and hurt many. I never meant to, but I was very much into the first love. But when the closeness and intamacy would hit me, I would panic and try to figure out an "easy" way out. Not for them of course but for me because I hated hurtin people and wanted to gently let them down so they wouldn't hate me. Only a couple of them knew me well enough to see that I was just scared, but they stayed my friend even though they watched me do the same thing with other guys.

I have had blah days like anyone but i can't really say I have ever been depressed in my life. Maybe is because I stay busy and not dwell so much, not sure.

I understand what you are saying Scarlett.

Part of me is sympathetic to her (my HPD X) and part of it isn't. Let me explain:

I sympathize with her because, even when I didn't know about HPD, I did call her out on several contradictions about her behavior, especially with regard to her leading guys on to her, or her negative attitude towards people whose intentions she mistrusted or her tantrums when she felt she didn't get my attention and so on AND on some occasions she did apologize or ask me to help her understand other people's intentions. I did try my best to help her (without knowledge of HPD), reason with her, explain to her what others felt, or how I always loved her even when I was not with her (she kept a photo of mine to escape her loneliness when she was away from me). So this sympathetic part of me did see her as a scared girl who wanted me to make her feel safe - I sometimes feel that my not knowing about HPD made me misjudge the severity of her insecurity and anxiety. After giving her so much love and security - and she still feeling it was not enough - I burnt out and myself went into depression and detachment out of severe confusion. I just didn't know how to deal with it - I wish I knew about this forum earlier.

I must mention here that my detachment (she didn't understand i was depressed) in the end seemed to make her obsessed with me, make her love me even more - she just seemed unable to get enough of me. This must have made her feel I will hurt her eventually - though I did try to tell her that inspite of my depression I loved her and wouldn't hurt her. This must have been the trigger to search for new "love interests" and sources.

The part of me that doesn't sympathize with her is when I notice some of the deliberate manipulations she did. Sometimes I could see in her eyes that she was doing things to gain control over me, isolate me from my friends and so on. Even when she decided that I had broken through her walls and that it was time for her to seek a new "love interest", she didn't break up with me, kept stringing me along, kept using me to do stuff for her (making me still invest in her emotionally), while she pursued her new "love interest" or let him "pursue" her behind my back. Then she deliberately provoked me to an angry outburst and used that to justify breaking up with me. After this, she still wanted to keep stringing me along - using me for advice on important decisions in her life (afterall she knew i was the only one she could trust completely). In those last days, I could see the smile in her eyes - it was as if she enjoyed hurting me, no remorse, she still baited me - as if using me and abusing my trust and my feelings meant nothing to her. Often she would punctuate her manipulations with indignant outbursts and sobbing on how she loved me so much and how I failed her - ignoring all the 2 years of my taking care of her. Her self-centeredness, manipulation, lies and deceit - as if all of her "evil" attributes came out in full force during these last days.

What surprised me initially was her desperation in pursuing her new love interest (when I came to know about it after the breakup) - she seemed obsessed and desperate - she proposed in a week, got engaged in a month and got married in 3 months - to a guy who was far below her level by all measures and is probably a bully (from what I hear from friends who know him - it does make me feel a bit sad for her - but she has made her choice and has to live with it). I was the first one she told her news about marriage too (again in a way that seemed she wanted to hurt me) - it seemed hurting me was the sole purpose of this marriage as well - she wanted to see my reaction. All the while, she kept spreading distorted facts and lies to my friends and workplace colleagues, justifying her leaving me - until I stood upto her and created a situation for No Contact and literally isolated her from my near and dear ones. Till the very end, she tried to keep in contact and kept justifying to me (and possibly herself) her need to leave me ( I could see she was confused), all the while planning her marriage ( very unfair to her fiance and now husband, who probably doesn't know this and was possibly being lied to).

Since she was so much into me, my sympathetic side feels for her. I wish she had some strength (atleast 10% of your strength) to accept her own flaws and improve herself for her own sake. My non-sympathetic side on the other hand tells me not to care about what happens to her. I guess its only human to feel both. In the end I did tell her about her disorder (and point out info on it) - which she dismissed completely ( she said I was sick and needed help) - which is the reaction I expected (and let her know that I expected it) but told her that one day the time will come when she will need this info (before going NC with her).

My non-sympathetic side wishes she never comes to realize her disorder and that she should face in life all the pain she gave me. But my sympathetic side wishes that she becomes self-aware like you (Scarlett) and many others on this forum, so that she can have a better life.

Hi New,

Just a quick response as I am on my way out for a long drive home, but wanted to say, let your sympathetic side rule over the non. I am not maknig excuses for her, but you becoming bitter is letting the disorder win. It means not only did it ruin her life, but yours too.

Don't let that happen.


Take care and I will write more when I can.

S

At an intellectual level, I agree with you Scarlett. My sympathies lie with her (now that I know about HPD). I do wish she gets better by going to therapy. Part of me will always remain sympathetic.

However, I do hold her accountable for her actions because she chose them. I know the impulse to do them comes from her disorder - but i also know that to choose to do them comes from her - and I know that she does evaluate those options in terms of the pleasure principle by wrongly and knowingly justifying away her responsibility for them. So while I do acknowledge the "impulse" to do things to her disorder, I hold her accountable for choosing to go ahead with her actions and then justifying them with lies and deceptions.

I have guided her a lot to understand her previous misdemeanors (without knowing about HPD), especially about her lack of boundaries and her inability to understand the difference between relationships - friendships, lovers, family and so on. But it seems i have failed - and in the end she has finally blamed me for trying to help her with this (after she got a new source) calling me "controlling", which I find disgusting, since I have always encouraged her friendships but asked her to be clear on the boundaries.

Because I have invested so much in her emotionally, physically and with my time, part of me with always remain unsympathetic to her. You have to appreciate that I am not interested in fighting the disorder - the disorder is not important to me - she was important to me. I would have fought the disorder, for her sake - if she didn't hop into her new relationship and fought it out with me (especially when I suggested therapy), just as you are doing it with your husband. The fact that she chose to run away from fighting her disorder, by denying it - by blaming me instead of appreciating my efforts for her - I hold her accountable for it.

I wish she had the interest to fight it out like you, Scarlett - I would have been with her on this. But she just didn't want to improve - she felt she had nothing to improve. I am myself learning and improving myself everyday - i have realised that I have co-dependancy issues since I was a parentified child and a caregiver.

But she seems to be not only unaware but also proud of her ability to ensnare men, enjoy at the expense of others and believes that as long as she can control her husband (by whatever means) she will have a perfect marriage and kids. Realising that I was improving on my co-dependancy issues, and that I was calling her to the carpet and telling her about her boundaries, she decided to run away by seeking out her new source.

I can only be partially sympathetic to a self-sabotaging person.

You are fully right and justified in your decisions New. I agree with you on that. Sympathetic she has the disorder, but you SHOULD hold her accountable. In the end it WAS her choice to run and not get better. That is very true.

The thing is she should have stopped to think, what am I doing here? What am I doing to YOU and what am I doing to the kids. Because once you have one divorce under your belt no matter how long you held out in that marriage, it is MUCH easier the second time around, and then third, fourth. For whatever reason people hold onto that first marriage the longest. Then it gets easier for them. I am glad for this in my instance because I can remember when we fought all the time. I was in college and was driving to school one day and it seemed like every song on the radio was about ALMOST splitting up but finding a way to work it out.

And I remember thinking before that I just want out and want to start over and not have this unhappiness and was blaming him. And then it really was an eye opener that I was the problem more than him and I didn't want to start over and admit defeat and have my marriage fail. I hate failing at anything. And it took some time to break free from the hold my family had on me which was a big part of our problems too. But now I have been out for 16 years away from them and with each year I get better. Him and my kids give me a reason to be better. That is also why I choose not to drink. Alcohol tore our family apart and we weren't that happy of a family before the alcohol. But the alcohol made it unbearable to be around my dad. And that was HIS choice to do that and not care about us.

Now this is MY choice to not drink or do the things that would hurt my family. So you are on a good path of recovery and I wish you the best in it that you recognize that it was nothing you could have done to save her, that it was something she CHOSE not to even fight to overcome and it is her loss. And deep down she knows that she is a coward in running instead of doing what was right.

S

As far as I've been told, I'm not HPD...

However I do this sort of thing all the time.

People like me, and actually there's like a club of us around here, don't care what we're doing to the people around us.
That's just how things pan out. It feels like a game, even.

If you fail to satisfy my needs and wants, then you're worthless to me.
What really is the point of sticking around for someone that has nothing to offer me?
Working things out for the betterment of a relationship or "fixing" myself because I have a disorder isn't in my plans.
I'm fine, you're flawed. That's the way my brain works...

Well... that's the way my brain works when I'm this way... Usually in the middle of a manic episode...
Any other time, like now, I'm no less of a predator without a lot of self-control, just less in people's faces about it...
I can see all sides....

Not really sure that I care for any of the conclusions.

New -

There's no guarantee that with therapy she would have changed, short or long term. Mine used three therapists over five years and while a few destructive traits abated, there was still the pervasive self-centeredness and attention needs from outside sources. Not to mention the emotionalism. So, HAD she agreed to therapy for some time period then failed, you'd have that much more time invested, and more emotions from which to heal from. You are immensely better off now. I fully believe that a true HPD can never heal and it becomes a decision of whether to protect your own health or wither away in the futility of a toxic relationship.

Jay Mack wrote:New -

There's no guarantee that with therapy she would have changed, short or long term. Mine used three therapists over five years and while a few destructive traits abated, there was still the pervasive self-centeredness and attention needs from outside sources. Not to mention the emotionalism. So, HAD she agreed to therapy for some time period then failed, you'd have that much more time invested, and more emotions from which to heal from. You are immensely better off now. I fully believe that a true HPD can never heal and it becomes a decision of whether to protect your own health or wither away in the futility of a toxic relationship.

As a rule, there's not cure for mental illness, no matter what features are popping up.
She'd always have been flawed in this way.
Some symptoms cycle, some fade off, some spring up years after you think you've adjusted to the person and their quirks.
Even therapy can't ensure a healthy mentality.

Be very careful when dating people with problems, but realize that everyone COULD be diagnosed with something.
My shrink gave me a copy of the DSM-IV a while back, because it was old and I asked for it.
I used it to diagnose my friends all the time, but they're all in the well-adjusted group of the world, as far as anyone except me is concerned.
Be sure you're protecting yourself.
Contrary to popular belief, illness is contagious... it's just a matter of how much trauma it takes for you to develop it.
You're better off.