How to break up with Histrionic Partner

I am in a relationship for over 4 years now and my partner(male) seems to have all characteristics of histrionic personality disorder and I am not able to cope with him anymore.
When we met and fell in love, he was still in relationship with his ex which i did not know and found out by accident. afterwards i wanted to breakup but somehow he convinced me that he had ended it but only being held back by the ex as they were emotionally connected. even when i couldnt believe it completely, i wanted to give our relationship another chance and let go off the past. I started trusting him again, even though it was hard i learned to trust him and have faith. but he had had few other incidents with other women which made it harder than it was. I had to fight my instincts everytime, to believe what he was saying.
over the past years, what i have observed about his behavior are these - he is very charming, he will talk about anything with such ease and becomes the center of attraction in any group. he will impersonate the opposite person and their likes becomes his likes ( i think thats how i started liking him because it was liking meeting a soulmate) and he will start to mirror their personlity once he becomes friends with them to an extent of doing everything of their liking. One of his friends think he likes to smoke but to me he doesnt like smoking, other friend thinks he doesnt like to watch films but to his parents, he watches the films on the first day. with me he is a dog person when in reality he is scared of dogs. he has hydrophobia with me but plays in the ocean and pool with friends. He hates his hometown and surroundings, disregards everyone living here as peasants and believes he should have been a celebrity living in LA/NYC. gets overly emotional to an extent of crying when smallest of things like changing his demographics online for a government document or unable to get the shirt that he wanted to buy. he only wants the most expensive stuff and goes to any extent to look good (goes to workout thrice a day these days) and thinks he is super good looking ( he is average looking by any standards) and i should be lucky to have it.
He gets bored very easily, cant keep his jobs longer. he has changed 4 companies in the past 4 years and there was a woman in his previous company who had alleged that he made advances on her. he convinced him that it was all a setup because people there were jealous of him. One day he is all jovial and laughing and suddenly next day he is all sulking saying he is in depression, life is empty and again he will be back to normal and again he will be all low and not talking, now for he is not able to handle stress in his life. but his life has no problems - stress free job, financially stable, lots of friends. It is like a big emotional roller coaster ride with him and im not able to keep up. Earlier i used to think he is lying me about being low and depressed but now when i am researching to figure out his odd behavior, it is also part of HPD. His words and actions never match. He says he is all about not spending and saving for future and asks me to be the same, but by evening he would have spent a huge sum on just clothes.
He keeps lying to me about his whereabouts and friends and always prefers female friends. He ignores his male friends who are there with him since schooldays and makes new female friends saying male friends are all bad influence and never lets me meet any of his friends. I dont even know if any of his friends know that he is in a relationship. When asked, he says he is a private person.
The thing is, offlate he is avoiding me a lot. recently he had gone out of country and we were not able to meet for about a month and when he came back, i asked him to meet me and he said he got flu and he is not able to get up. but when i called him couple of hours later to check on him, he was at the gym working out. when asked, he says exercising is very important to him and since he couldnt work out for a month now he went. A month earlier, he had mentioned to me about a gym instructor who is really hot and how he was drooling over her and how i am nothing in front of her. i felt bad but did not say anything. Now he is avoiding to meet me saying he has stomach bug, cold, flu but driving miles to go to the gym where she is instructing just to see her. Mind you there is a branch of that gym next door. He also told me that he went there because of her again when i asked he said its fine he only finds her hot not a big deal. but i saw him chatting with her all the time, when asked he says he is trying to be friends with her because she is 10 years younger and he finds it the perfect fit. he says he is trying to get rid of all his old friends and make new friends and the criteria is 10 years younger to him and she is the best fit. I don't know how that works and i dont feel good that he did not tell me upfront.
Everytime i confront him about his lies, he says that i am not treating him the way he deserves to be treated and i am being paranoid. He says that i am letting him down by my unrealistic expectations even though he is treating me way better than i deserve. I see a pattern here, he had phased his ex out the same way he is doing with me righht now. In the texts that i saw between them was an argument about him seeing me and him giving her the same explanation ' i am making new friends as my current ones are not good'. I can see that he will do the same with me soon and I don't want to go through the pain of being made a fool and all the insecurity and fighting my instincts to believe him. I am having panic attacks and nightmares thinking about us. As much as i dont want to suffer, I dont want the next person (gym instructor who is much younger) to suffer like me also. I dont know what to do. Is he having HPD or any other PD? am I expecting too much of him or being paranoid? is being honest in a relationship not a thing anymore? Please help.

Hey canttakeitanymore,

canttakeitanymore wrote:I can see that he will do the same with me soon and I don't want to go through the pain of being made a fool and all the insecurity and fighting my instincts to believe him. I am having panic attacks and nightmares thinking about us. As much as i dont want to suffer, I dont want the next person (gym instructor who is much younger) to suffer like me also.

Let's start with the assumption he has a PD -

The main thing I want to write is that others are going to have to learn through their own experiences, just as you had to learn that way. Let me ask you, if someone had warned you before you got emotionally involved, would you have been at a place in life where you knew what you know now, and listened to them?

yes i would have listened.. a little advice now would help me greatly too

I get your point, that each of us have to learn from our own experiences and we cant help others by warning them. I need advice about his personality and how i can breakup with him without causing a huge damage.. if he is having a PD and is not aware of it, i would like to try and help him out because i care about him..

We aren't able to diagnose him here, but I'll go with let's assume he has HPD. What you wrote certainly matches the types of behavior of others have written about, including the parts about him switching beliefs and personalities to match others.

Honestly I don't know how to make it easier to end the relationship, but I can offer some encouragement. You certainly are not alone in finding it a hard disorder to live with. I've been through it myself, and we've had many people here write about this same situation (though more often it's a man with a female HPD partner, we've had a few like you, where it was the male with HPD and a female partner who reached a point of I can't do this anymore).

I am not entirely clear if what you need is help with the resolve to end this, or just advice on how to make it easier, maybe both? I also don't know of any way to help him out until/if he is ready.

For me I found the best way to end it was to just start being really honest. Honest with myself, honest with her. So for example, if she switched her point of view over some new idol of the day, start calling that out, and I was honest I wanted no part of the new idolization. Actually honest to the Nth degree and said, 'here we go again, new idol, new beliefs of the day; tomorrow it will be someone else and whole new set of beliefs'. That made me the scumbag in her eyes for a while, but oh well. She slowly lost interest the more honest I was, and I slowly became clearer minded why the relationship was toxic. We both got a chance to get some closure, even if much of it was not happy joy joy. Who knows, maybe some of it will stick with the next person?

I needed some advice on how to breakup, because it is not easy with him. Every time we have a fight or an argument which takes a serious turn, he will end up acting sick and it will put a lot of pressure on me to be with him through the sickness so I am not sure what will happen if say i want to end things now. Now that he has a new interest will he be ready to let me go or will he throw up a tantrum to retain me till he can get to a stage where he is center of her world?

As you said, I will try to be honest with him, probably tell him how I think that he might be having HPD and see if how he is taking it and is ready for therapy.

The very first things that I noticed in him which i found odd are, how he always uses always and never in most of his statements and his lack of conscience (after I found out about his unended relationship with his ex) . He used to say things like, "I never shared my stuff with anyone, youre the only one that i am sharing this earphones with" I used to think to myself, no big deal even if he shares. "I never went to films with anyone, youre the only one that i am going with". "I always call you first thing in the morning". But when I started to show him how I found these statements arent true in most of the instances, he stopped using these completely. So far, I have not seen him a regretting/showing remorse in one single situation. He always plays the victim and I used to think to myself, he doesnt have conscience or what? But lately when i started researching on personality types i found out that these are also the traits of HPD. I am just venting out here, for so many years, so many things are piled up inside me. I have been confused most of the times, not sure of what is happening because at the end of each argument/disagreement, he used to convince me that i am not treating him the he deserves to and he is bearing me.
Thanks for your time and advice.

Advice that I need is to know if he will accept if I say I want to split up since he has a new interest now or will he throw a tantrum because he is losing attention? Just to get my self prepared based on that.

The very first things that I noticed as odd in him are these three - lack of conscience and how he used 'never' in his statement all the time. the third one is how he can read people and remember intricate details about them so easily, this one did not hit me at first as I was thinking that he is understanding me so well but then as time passed by, I noticed that he has that ability with everyone. He can remember salesgirls name in the shops that he does not frequent so much and can remember what you like to eat, which is your favorite character in a show and all even if you've mentioned it once in a different context. He can remember your parents names, relatives names and what they do, everything even if you've met only once casuallly. I was always amazed by this quality.
Many a times, I have asked myself whether he has conscience or not ? how can he not be sorry about something that bad? because he is never sorry. It is always how his circumstances/ people around him forced him to make those choices and he is the victim. When telling any of his old stories about school times, he has always pictured himself as a victim of circumstance, like how bad influence made him to try drugs at an early age, how his parents are responsible for him to choose friends who are way too older for his age and he is struggled because of all that and he overcame. But in reality, all his classmates have done well in life and are in good jobs and he still goes out for drinks with those friends that he says are bad influence. His words never match his actions. And when I ask, he says he tried but it didn't work so he moved on to being something else.

I'm just venting out here, so many questions were piled up in my mind over the years and when I started reading about personality types, i stumbled upon this HPD and I was awestruck as to how everything can be explained with this.

I've tried to be honest with him and have asked him when his actions don't match his words or when he is shifting his emotions rapidly. When confronted all i got was how i don't understand him and not giving him space. One more thing he does every time we are having an argument about anything is, he will start telling how life has been difficult on him and how he is trying hard to manage everything and how i am not being understanding and making it harder for him. I know his life and it is as comfortable as it can get.

I'm thinking I will tell him how I think he might have HPD and ask if he is ready for couple counseling and see how it goes from there. Is it a good idea? or should I just walk away knowing what I've known is enough.

Thank you for your time.

I'll write these thoughts then -

We aren't able to diagnose him, but agree that your observations very much match those who have had a relationship with someone with HPD (or presumed to have).

You actually nailed a key matter in your post above. Why do people with HPD tend to pick up on other's personalities and mirror them so easily? I don't have a simple answer, but it may come down to that they are very tuned in to others expressions on an intuitive level (that doesn't mean they understand the meaning behind those expressions though), and that they have been rewarded for with attention for doing so.

I don't have a great analogy for this next thought, but for example, do you enjoy music or a movie more when you are thinking about it, or just deeply engaged? What I wanted to suggest then is that it may just be part of the disorder that his intuition (and reinforcement) depends on not over-thinking it. So asking him to think about it, let alone to analyze himself, well, that doesn't seem likely to happen.

The main thing here is that you come to a point of being okay. You clearly know that if nothing changes this can't go on. I don't know if you can completely avoid hurting his feelings, but if things continue as is you are going to end up doing so anyway, just more harshly as you reach more painful breaking points.

Thank you for your insightful reply. I'm glad i found this forum, learning a lot from others who are posting and your replies.

Thank you for your insightful reply. I tried to hang on but i could not do it anymore and I broke up with him today. we had a talk last week where in I asked him to be honest with him and I promised him that I will be as understanding as I can be and we agreed upon it.

But then, he continues to lie to me, I happened to see him meeting his new interest while lying to me that he is sleeping at home. I did not confront him though, because i know he will come up with some reason and blame me for questioning. I don't want to go through the same again. We met on my birthday last week and I could feel how he is treating me differently than before. There was no warmth at all. Today, we were grocery shopping and he suddenly snapped at me for a joke i made and it soon turned into an argument where i said i cant take it anymore. everytime we argue, he says how he has been struggling for the past 4 years being with me and how i am such a difficult person who doesnt contribute anything to the relationship. I told him he doesnt have to suffer anymore and he is free to go and he agreed instantly and left.

Even though I know that I'm doing the right thing, it doesnt feel so good It will take sometime for me to get over him.