Looking for reassurance
I (m43) feel quite nervous asking this as my first post on Reddit.
I am in a very bad way after a 4.5 year relationship has ended with someone I suspect to have suffered from BPD (f31)
I am unable to work and have suffered what I believe to be a nervous breakdown. I’m seeing a psychologist who specialises in personality disorders and he suggested BPD (in her)but likely with other things too.
Her ex partner also contacted me through a mutual friend and we spoke for over 2 hours. He had the same experience as me albeit he was only with her for 1.5 yrs. we both also know the ex before him left her but the suffered a breakdown and lost his job.
Her ex before me now has a new partner who is a psychologist and she sent him a video on BPD which he sent to me and it matches very close to what we experienced.
I’ve never spoken to previous partners before in a relationship.
My worry is that because I am naturally an anxious person who over thinks, I could have caused what happened. He is quite different though and seems to have had the same experience.
It’s difficult though as she is saying that the issue was that when she was upset she needed space and I was unable to give her that (I became anxious and would try to talk to her and struggle to leave her alone and go and do something else). It was often because this need for space came after I tried to very gently raise a topic I wanted to discuss regarding the relationship and she would very quickly take over the conversation and say the most awful things that I must think about her like “you think I’m a useless piece of shit” or “you f’ing hate me”. I would never ever say this and never ever even thought it. She would then cry and then walk away saying “this conversation is over”. I would then panic that she really did think I felt these awful things about her and try to reassure her but it would escalate things.
I once tried to explain how I didn’t want to leave her sat there thinking I really thought that but she would get angry and say “this just shows how little you trust me, the fact I’m with you should tell you I don’t think that”
These “arguments” made up maybe 20% of the worrying times but the bigger issue was her anger, which she wouldn’t discuss at all other than to say that:
“All my relationships have ended because of my anger and I feel relieved when they do as I don’t need to worry about it anymore”
She said this in the very early days along with other statements like;
“Do you know what it feels like to be full of rage?”
“Do you know exhausting it is to wear a mask so people think you’re normal when actually you hate people and don’t want to interact with anyone”
“You don’t love me, you love the silly, sunny friendly bitch I show the world but that’s not me”
“One day you’ll leave me and wish you had done it earlier”
“This will never work between us as you want to fix things and I want to burn the world”
“My whole life has been chaos, this shit isn’t changing”
Throughout the relationship there has been a pattern of extreme declarations of love “I love you, no you don’t understand, I am IN love with you” and lots of gift giving. Also calling me best and perfect one. The gifts were always so nice and very personal with a lot of thought behind them.
Alongside this have been regular dark moods seemingly from nowhere where I would be ignored completely for extended periods of time (although she would still talk nicely to the pets). If I tried to interact I would either be ignored or scowled at or maybe get a one word answer or a shrug. She could be very sarcastic and humiliating too. She could go to sleep in a great mood and wake up staring into space and completely furious.
I was dumped twice before the final time (1 and 2 year points), both times she laughed at me as I was crying. The first time was after her mood changed during us getting coffee and she became rude to me and I said that I didn’t know what had happened but please don’t treat me like this as I haven’t done anything, she then ended it there and then. She changed her mind that evening.
She made the 2 year one very humiliating for me and seemed to enjoy toying with me. When we got back together she didn’t seem happy and when I said I was happy we would try again, she just said “yes, I know you are”.
She even admitted to being abusive saying that she couldn’t stop it and it’s what she does. Although later on she said she only said that to get rid of me.
She also did impressions of me from time to time. She sometimes smiled for a split second when she saw I was crying.
She would sometimes not let me leave for work and kept asking me for one more kiss or hug which I always gave her, but eventually when I had to leave she then would sulk and I would go away feeling awful.
She hung up the phone on me often
She insulted me to her friends in a group chat that I saw on her iPad. Totally misrepresenting what had happened and calling me a bitch and a fucker.
Small mistakes were often taken to mean something very significant such as if I picked up the wrong dog lead, it showed that I didn’t care about the dogs or her and hated them all. If I looked, at my watch at breakfast she once cancelled the whole day we had planned as clearly I was distracted.
It was very common that days out together would be ruined for no reason, but she would say that she had decided the day was ruined and any attempt to recover it was invalidating her.
Some days she would refuse to get out of the car and would sit there for hours, without reason, meaning we couldn’t do that we had planned to.
She would take things I said and twist it into something awful and then say she needed to go and think about my character and rethink the relationship.
I found that in public she was very nice to everyone but could somehow still direct aggression back to me. If we were walking and she wasn’t talking to me she could immediately switch into being friendly if we met anyone.
There is a whole lot more but I feel dreadful and am looking for some support as to if this sounds like it could be BPD.
I am ashamed of my behaviour towards the end of the relationship as I was going home less (I work in a very remote place and was staying at a staff room more and more), and I was not investing in her house (I paid half the mortgage but had no equity) which I had been thrown out of twice already. I also stopped being generous and giving towards her.
My job takes a large portion of my life as it’s very demanding and any time it impacted on her/us she got very very angry and it would lead to prolonged silent treatment.
I am stuck blaming myself as I worry that had I been less anxious she would have no treated me like this, and maybe if I had been able to be unaffected by her moods and given her space when she needed it, things would have been ok. She said she was lashing out as I wouldn’t stop trying to talk to her.
The larger issue for me was that her moods were so extreme and could change so fast, which made trips away or days out very stressful. Especially car journeys.
I live in a tiny community and will see her around lots and given how I saw me and her getting together she will move on fast and make sure I see.
It crazy as despite all this I loved her very much and I still do. It’s killing me for her to so coldly move on. She did the same to her ex and it badly affected him for 12 months and into his new relationship.
I’m trying to be honest with my part in things and all I can add is that I have never insulted her, shouted at her, intentionally said or done anything to hurt her. I find prolonged silence awkward and I will have tried to make conversation with my partner.
Anyway I am nervous to read the comments but I’m pretty low right now.
I know this sounds like a pretty bad list but in between all of this was a smiley and cute girl who seemed to love me and was planning a future and talking about engagement. We even got a cat together 6 months ago.
I kept a list on notes in my phone of what was happening (I’ve never done this before) and I would guess there are 100+ lines of things that were upsetting enough to record over 4.5 years.
My head hurts so much