Do things get better?
Me and my pwBPD have been together for a year now, we’re both 19, she’s the first person I’ve ever been with and the first person I’ve ever been intimate with.
When we first started dating, everything felt amazing, we were always excited to see each other, we treated each other with respect and compassion, and it wasn’t soon after we made it official and told each other we loved each other. (Within the same month)
But over time I started to recognize patterns, she’d have super fluctuating highs and lows, would get mad at me over the littlest things, stopped taking care of herself and had little to no energy or productivity to do things her self.
She lost her friends, started having problems with her parents (which have their own assortment of problems which probably contributed to who she is now), but she has always recognized her issues and apologized about them to me.
Recently things have been worse than ever, she got fired from her job, has been constantly criticizing me, been super depressed, barely ever wants to be intimate or have sex, and then she got into a car crash in which she had to have emergency surgery on her eye.
Now that she’s in recovery, I feel myself feeling hopeless, falling out of love, becoming emotional and struggling to see things clearly. I’ve been trying to take care of myself, but she believes I’m making everything she’s going through about me. That I should be there for her 24/7 to take care of her.
I feel like I’m always taking care of her, whether she’s having problems at work or with her family or with her personal life. I’m her only support, I do everything I can to make her happy, buy her food and drinks, take her shopping, do whatever she asks of me on a moments notice.
And she never does much for me, besides love bombing on the days that matter, (anniversaries, holidays, birthdays), I don’t ask for much, all I want is for her to be intimate with me, to be interested in my hobbies and the things I like, and stop being so critical of everything I do.
I’m getting tired of it, she always promises to change, to be a better partner, but we’ve been on a downward slope for a while. And since this is my first relationship, and because I have ADHD, I always believed I couldn’t do better than her, that she was meant for me, that I could never leave her or abandon her.
I’m thinking of telling her we need to take a break, I feel myself being tempted to cheat or see other people, but I don’t want to. I truly love her, there are so many great qualities about her, she’s great with my family, we have so much fun together, have amazing sex, she’s full of hope for the world and has so much love for others. She’s such a lovable and sensitive soul but filled with so much anger and sadness.
I’m scared if I leave her she’ll end her life, she has nothing else besides me, I want to fix things, to make her happy, but I also want to be happy.
So I guess my question is, do things ever get better?
Or am I hopeless?