Thand you Anita. I appreciate all your help. I am going to work through it. I really hope I can save my relationship as well. He said he understands me but asks why I don’t sit down and go through my feelings with them. I just don’t think this would work. We finally agreed also that his mom living here would be a very rare scenario but have been disagreeing more on his relationship with her now. He still does a lot for her like cooking, cleaning, and being her punching bag for a lot of her own issues. She basically takes and never gives, is basically how I feel. His sister too, he gives her generous gifts and tries to hang out with her and she is pretty rude and unappreciative. Maybe I am projecting my own issues but it kills me to see this go on as well. I don’t want to lose him and I’m so torn up but his family can also be so triggering.

Also with the friendships and relationships, I could not change myself for her. I joined a sorority, but it was so forced and fake I could not stand it and dropped out. She was extremely disappointed even though she wanted me to do it. She had seen firsthand that my relationships were abusive, but she would just mock me for not being able to get out of it.

Anita,

Regarding the first paragraph, it makes so much sense now but I truly never thought of it this way. I just figured a miniscule percent of people had mental illness and that was it, and that I had the odds in my favor in finding someone who didnt. I could not have been more wrong and that is troubling.
Yes like my most recent close friend, I wanted to be around her 24/7 because I was having fun, then she started to use me for her personal gain. And me wanting to keep the peace, I did what she wanted. This caused me more pain because I would panic if she didn’t call, constantly wonder if she was mad, and this was just a friend.
I’m with you on that example. My mom does know how to show it because she is so sappy and annoying around babies and small children and she has been like this my whole life to people outside our immediate family. it literally would turn my stomach to hear her baby noises, lol. So what the problem with her children was, I don’t know.
My whole life she has tried to make me feel bad for being different. Whenever I had friends over she would lecture me on not being perky and outgoing. She loved to say “kids your age do this or do that.” She would tell me I needed to be more like my friends because they were doing more activities or going to a better school or had a better job. She was always screaming at me to speak. I didn’t have much to say to her because everything was a criticism. Whenever I got upset or had an argument her response was, “what did you do to piss them off?” So everything was automatically my fault? If a boyfriend broke up with me when I was younger it was, “boys like girls with tight bodies” or “boys like girls who let them take the lead.” She never had “the talk” with me either and started listening to my conversations and she cried when she learned I had had sex. Even my dad who wasn’t half as bad as my mom would make comments like, no wonder so and so dumped your ass, or I wish she was my daughter because she’s so talented.

This is all that comes to mind at the moment, wow does this get on my nerves even now haha.

Gigi

Hi Anita,
I have been doing more and more research. I feel like I fit most of the symptoms. I do feel now like I always had trouble with friends growing up. I would get angry at them if I felt they weren’t doing things my way, and I would take it extremely hard when I was left out. I always thought I was just shy, but I am starting to remember being a bit of a brat. However, this is the same personality of my mom, very critical, harsh and blunt so I don’t know for sure when the more serious problems started. I also used to get crushes on boys and become obsessed to the point that a lot of people would make fun of me. However I had friends like this too.
When I finally started dating I had almost a grandiose view of myself. I thought I was cute, fun, quirky, smart, but a lot of this was inflated. I read that bpd people can attract abusers but also perpetuate the problem and that’s what happened in most relationships. They had problems too and when I realized this i went crazy trying to save the relationship when I should have just moved on. I guess it hurts most that I got blamed for everything by exes and friends too. I know friends would try to help me and I wouldn’t listen or they just didn’t get involved. A lot of my old friends had said they couldn’t take me anymore. So do I consider that me destroying our friendship, or them abandoning me? On that note I do have the symptom of black and white thinking. If I have a good encounter with someone I say .. “I love her!” Or if we have an argument or even something about them starts to bother me I say “I hate her!” I am just now realizing this about myself too and that it’s probably not normal.
Between relationships I would be very impulsive. I would have a lot of sex, drink a lot, drive long distances on a whim, and put myself in dangerous situations all the time. I would always ask myself why I couldn’t find a good man before while doing this. I feel like I got married on impulse, got divorced, moved, quit or changed jobs.. I am exhausted thinking about it. The only symptom I would say I don’t have is the self mutilation, although I have threatened suicide in an attempt to get one boyfriend back and barely scratched myself one time to show him, although I could not bring myself to do any real damage.
Lastly, I read an article about how some people take parental anger out on a significant other, but this concept can also work in reverse. Like maybe I have dated some people because of parental issues, but the sum of all my abusive relationships is also making the rage towards my parents grow. However, you read earlier about the way my parents were and they were definitely not healthy to begin with. I would love to get to a place where I could move on from all of this. I am still not talking to my mom and only once in a while to my dad. But I am just feeling so much shame now. My partner has been so supportive, telling me that if friends stopped talking to me they weren’t really good friends anyway. But what if I am actually a completely different Person?
Thanks,
Gigi

Hi All,

I have been feeling a variety of moods this week, some good and some not so good. Tuesday night I ended up texting the Crisis hotline about an argument with my boyfriend about his mom living with us, and the guilt from that sent me into a severe anxiety attack. After I calmed down I decided that I do need to take my healing into my own hands.
I have been reading a lot about borderline personality disorder and a lot of the things I have read or watched on YouTube have resonated with me. I’m not in therapy at the moment but I want to be soon so I can’t say for sure however. I struggle so much between guilt from my past and at the same time feeling like a victim of my past, I don’t quite know myself yet.
I read something on here recently that a manipulator doesn’t always manipulate on purpose. That helped me a lot. I don’t need to forgive my exes necessarily and I know some were malicious but maybe not all meant to hurt me the way they did. I started to see that I both allowed these things to happen because I was so beaten down, and I would engage in abusive behaviors right back like throwing things or slapping back. I have been the person sitting back while someone cheats and feeling helpless, to obsessively snooping. I started this relationship now with confidence and do not want to go back to my old ways. I don’t know if a diagnosis of something would help me, or if I can just trust that I have the self awareness to make change. Thank you all so much!
Gigi

Hello all, I wanted to revive this to ask one more thing without starting a new topic. My boyfriend and I got into a really emotional discussion tonight about parents and I am still hurting from not what he said but just the way I upset him. We got on the topic because we were talking about a coworker who is like a father figure to him was discussing his love life with my boyfriend. I said that’s a little strange and unprofessional, but he is also having the same discussions with his mom. His father passed away a year ago but they had been separated since he was young. His mom has been remarried for over 20 years now to someone who is kind of a jerk on the surface but is supposedly abusive behind closed doors. My boyfriend got into a fight with the husband a few years ago before I was in the picture, but he still visits the house to see the mom and his half sister.
His mom now routinely calls my bf to complain about her husband, and the sister has told us that he has hit the mom on several occasions and kicked her out of the bedroom. However, the sister is very loving to her father when we go over there so I don’t know what to believe. The mom just complains that she hates him, but won’t leave or go to the police. My boyfriend has said that if he hurts the sister, he will drive to their house and have a physical confrontation. I said this is completely unacceptable as he would be breaking the law and jeopardizing our relationship, even though I do understand. I don’t like the fact that his mom constantly complains, but we have to act like everything is okay. She already did not let my boyfriend have a childhood by making him work to pay her bills. I love her but I think he should let her fix her own problems. This brought up how I said I do not love my parents, but they still financially supported me. He was in no way supported by her. He keeps telling me I need to change my mind because of the regrets he has losing his dad. I understand this too, but it doesn’t change my feelings about my parents.
He keeps asking my hypothetical questions like would I let my mom move in with us if she lost everything. I still say I am not sure. He said that is the difference between us because he would do it, and he knows I’m not that heartless. I guess we just come from such different backgrounds and we cannot understand each other on the topic. I’m okay with helping his family out if needed, but not when they can’t help themselves. I feel so lost and sad that I hurt him when I know this is a sensitive subject for him, what should I do f?

Gigi

Thank you so much for the replies!

Anita: I really understand what you mean, that once I mess up I should just mess up all the way my I have felt this way in classes where I said I will just stop going, stop studying. Same thing at work, I would receive certain assignments but feel so overwhelmed that I wouldn’t do it until right before the deadline. I feel in relationships I have always felt that I was in a bad situation but just kind of accepted it and tried to keep the peace.

Matty: I agree that I try to love myself but most of the time I don’t. When I was younger maybe but it wasn’t meant to last. I guess I figured if someone put me down they were right and knew better than me. I struggle to find the line between where I went wrong and where others went wrong. Maybe some people don’t hate me except a few exes who stalked me, called me a slut, etc. but those people are not worth contacting for me. As for the friends, I am not sure as I have removed myself from social media. I might just have to let it go and move on. I know compared to others maybe I am not so bad but whatever haopens to me feel like it’s magnified times a hundred. I’d like to get to that point where I do feel bulletproof.

Asher: You’re absolutely right. Maybe I am avoiding looking within. I don’t always trust myself and I’m afraid of the decisions I will make sometimes. I will take this one day at a time.