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Suspecting my ex/girlfriend may have ASPD

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Suspecting my ex/girlfriend may have ASPD

Postby JPF » Thu Aug 23, 2012 4:01 pm

I'd appreciate some advice here. I just broke up with my girlfriend, again. I did the same last year, and back then, I was very suspicious that she may have ASPD. We got back together for another year, and I just this week gave up on her. But now I'm wondering if I should tell her or her family that I really suspect she may suffer from ASPD, and should try therapy. I'm going to go into some detail, in the hope that the facts may help you all to give me good advice. There's a lot of intimate relationship details here, focusing on the bad parts mostly. The good side is that she's very charming, funny, and fun to be around, almost like a child who delights you with her innocence and naivete. Also she's quick-witted and foul-mouthed.

(As an aside which might be relevant, I know she has misophonia, as mouth noises (slurping, chewing, heavy breathing) from people she's close with triggers an angry reaction that she has difficulty controlling. But nothing worse than a snappy comment or angry demand for the person to stop chewing. This, I just learned recently from her, was why she would only exceedingly rarely kiss me passionately - because the sounds made by a passionate tongue kiss would trigger the angry, disgusted reaction typical in misophonia. At any rate, I thought this might be relevant if misophonia and ASPD are linked.)

History: I met her when she was taking my college class (she's only a few years younger than me). Didn't participate much in class, but handed in an excellent final paper. A year later, I randomly met her on a train. Found a point in common when I told her I was planning for a vacation, and my destination happened to be where she grew up with her family. We went out, and started a passionate love affair. We lived in different parts of the same city - she lives with her family who are religious, so we couldn't have sex at her house - only my apartment. She would often agree to come over to my place, but then cancel the day before. So I would end up going to her neighborhood often, and we'd have sex wherever we could, once on her friend's balcony during the evening, once in the backseat of a car parked on a busy street while her friend and sister went to buy ice cream - pretty wild for me, and I could see that making sense as we were both raised in religious households. Rebellion and all. Also, I had explained to her that I didn't believe in monogamy; but she wouldn't take anything less, so I said that I would give it my best shot because I really liked her.

She then went abroad for a months-long internship, and we stayed in close contact. I visited her for a week, and had an amazing time with her, finally able to live together without her parents around. I came back to the US, and we were still in close contact. Then her family came to visit her, and she warned me that she would be more difficult to reach - so for a good month and a half, when she was nearly impossible to talk to, I chalked it up to her being busy. When she finally returned, she turned away from my kiss. She then explained that she had started sleeping with a guy friend of hers while abroad. But that it was just a friendship that got out of hand, that their relationship wasn't very sexual, and that she was still in love with me and would just need a couple of weeks to readjust.

It was a rough few months then. I couldn't seem to get her to spend much romantic time with me. On our anniversary, I had told her far in advance I wanted to make it a special day. Then a week prior, she said she'd have to babysit for a family friend during the day, but that she would meet me at night. I suspected she'd back out, and at the end of the night, she asked me if she could go home first to take a shower, and then go out to meet me - I said yes, but then she called to say she was too tired. So I went over to her family's house and broke up with her; but she begged me not to, and I went back with her.

In the meantime, there were just lots of times when we'd make plans, and she would back out. She had just started a tough graduate program, so I chalked up the strange contradiction between what she told me her feelings were toward me and her actions toward me as the result of the stress of school. I began helping her with her school work, and then I started to even write things for her. Small things at first, then, later, whole 4-5 page exam answers.

That winter, I had planned a vacation with a friend, invited her but she turned me down. While I was gone, she was nearly impossible to contact again, ignoring my calls. I actually got worried about her because this was so out of the blue that I called her father, and he promptly handed the phone over to her. She was fine. Amid my worry about her, the only thing she thought to write me was about how she'd need help from me to apply for some internship or something.

Anyway, when I got back she explained that the guy she had the fling with while abroad had unexpectedly come to visit, but stayed in town for just a couple of days while she was there. Months went by, and I'd find myself crying at times by her amazing lack of affection, coldness, and distance. But then other times, she'd be affectionate and tell me she loved me deeply. On Valentine's Day, I gave her a necklace (which she subsequently never once wore) she said she loved, and agreed that we were in an 'official' girlfriend-boyfriend relationship. Previously, she had always said that she was afraid of the 'official' relationship terms, because they made her deeply uncomfortable.

Right before she left to go on a new summer internship abroad in a different country, while I was in her room with her, helping her with an exam that she was overwhelmed by, I was looking for an email on her computer related to the exam, and I saw the name of the guy she had the fling with. Then I snooped through the emails and chats she exchanged with him, and was shocked to find her telling him that she loved him, amid other more mundane details. Nothing sexual that I could see. But she had told him exactly when her flight to a country nearby his would be landing that summer. I confronted her with it, and she was angry at my snooping, but also desperately afraid of losing me, and promised to cut off all contact with the guy if that was what it took. But I didn't want to force her to do anything, so her assurances that they were just friends satisfied me.

After that day, a friend of mine helped to look the guy up on facebook, and I found that he had stayed in our city for over a week when I was gone on vacation, that she had posted a picture of them kissing, and holding hands, and going all over the city together. We broke up.

When she came back from this internship, she tried and succeeded at getting me back, doing the first seriously sweet thing I can remember - cleaning my new apartment and organizing my things for me. We got closer, and were even discussing marriage. She told me a couple of times that she wanted to marry me, and always have me in her life.

Summer came again, and another internship abroad. But before she left, without me asking her to, she told me that she had spoken to her fling-guy, and said they had to cut off contact because she didn't want to lose me. That made me actually start to trust her again. But then when she was abroad, she told me that she spoke to him, that he wanted to see her just once to close their chapter and move on, and I said if that's absolutely all that happens, fine. But I started feeling distrust again, especially when she became more and more aloof and hard to reach. In the end, because she took so long to tell him when it would be OK for him to visit, he apparently just got his own flight when her sister and friend were over, stayed in the same city with them for about a week, including a weekend at the beach. Her sister didn't like the idea, and thought it was crazy for her to spend time with this guy - but my girlfriend didn't seem to comprehend how this would make me feel. She has this tendency to strike out and go on the offensive when most people would be on the defensive, and our relationship got rocky again.

I'm going to be moving cross-country for a graduate program in January. She had told me before this latest internship that she would move with me and live together, but during the internship she said she realized that she shouldn't do that because she should focus on her career. Which makes perfect sense to me, but why not think of that before telling me you'll move with me? At any rate, I broke up with her.

So what I want to know is if she's probably just a very immature girl, who although she's in her late 20s, because she's always lived in her family's house, sharing her bedroom even with her sister, and has never lived with a boyfriend or even been able to sleep over at my place more than a few times here and there, merely can't empathize with someone in a more common living situation for people our age? Or does it seem more likely that she has an emotional deficiency arising from ASPD?

Facts that make me wonder: She's very charming, very cute, extremely fun, and a bit wild. She however has been completely puzzled many times when I've been hurt by her, by things that are pretty commonly recognized to be hurtful. Obviously, my friends and family agree with me, but even her sister has told me that she doesn't give me the love I "deserve". Over the 2.5 years I've known her, she still cannot make plans and commit to them. She has difficulty committing to anything. She has no best friend outside of her sister - according to her I was her best friend when we were involved - and during the school year she hardly if ever goes out to spend time with her casual friends.

She's been de facto using me to get through her graduate program. Without my help, she almost certainly would have failed out. She has promised sexual favors for help, albeit not entirely seriously. She's been extremely loving - in fact, that's almost the only time she's extremely affectionate is when I'm helping her with her studies, from reading our respective books in the same room, to me writing things for her or editing her work.

Despite her looks, she's very insecure about her appearance, owing to serious acne problems as a child. She's had a lot of hormonal problems in her past, and she can't take birth control now to avoid an imbalance now. She's very moody - she considers herself to be a very 'bitchy' person. She had a faint memory of being sexually abused by a family member when she was a child. And in our own sex life, we would have at the very most, sex once a week. I would always initiate it, and almost always, the only way I could was by playfully getting myself in position for cunnilingus - meanwhile, she would protest the whole time, not seriously, but just saying she wasn't in the mood, or wasn't feeling good about her body. Once I got my mouth between her thighs, then she'd make a 180 degree turn - aroused almost immediately, and would in a few minutes literally beg me for intercourse. She would rarely like an affectionate style of lovemaking, would turn away from kisses as they got passionate, and would prefer rougher sex. This describes a good 95% of our sexual experiences!

...

Does this seem to the people here to be a likely case of ASPD, or could it simply be an immature young woman who hasn't had the life experience to mature and develop and be able to empathize with an adult in a relationship? Who was in over her head in a graduate program, and took my offers of help simply out of desperation and fear, not through manipulation? Who may have been the victim of molestation as a child, and never tried to examine its effects during therapy?

Lastly, I have a good relationship with her family, and I really love them. I'd like to continue seeing them from time to time, but I don't want to see her, unless she'd want to go to couple's counseling with me - or go to a therapist herself. Does anyone think that I should bring up the topic of ASPD with them, to ask them to try to convince her to look into therapy? Or am I just overreacting - being disappointed that things didn't work out, and my imagination about ASPD is getting the better of me: that she's exactly what one would expect given her situation in life? Maybe the psychological problem is mine, in that I put up with someone so unaffectionate and carelessly hurtful for a couple of years?
JPF
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