It is easier to fall in love with someone but a lot more difficult to make it work when you are suffering from Borderline Personality Disorder. I’ve been dating people since 2009, back when I was a teenager and now I’m 26 and I still haven’t experienced any successful long lasting relationships.
I was diagnosed with BPD back in 2016 when I had a massive mental breakdown in public and immediately checked myself into a hospital the very next day. The cause of this breakdown was a failed love interest which I took too hard. With each relationships, I’ve noticed a similar pattern.
1. Intense attractions: This could mean falling for someone way too hard, way too soon and possibly already fantasising (constantly) about a possible future with them.
2. Going out of my way to be with them: This means spending more financial resources than I have as well as cancelling my other plans to be with them. This also included getting myself into unnecessary trouble just to spend time with the person or “make that person like me”.
3. Getting paranoid: Whenever the other person fails to communicate their feeling with you, the immediate reaction (like a reflex action) would be to think of the worst case scenario. This can be for two reasons. a) we are secretly hoping that the opposite of whatever we are thinking would happen. b) to brace ourselves for the worst kind of emotional pain we are about to experience.
4. Getting angry/anxious: If the person fails to reciprocate to our feelings in the same way we often get offensive. The feeling of paranoia takes over our head completely and it is all we can think off thus robbing one off of their valuable time.
5. Impulsiveness: Once the strong emotions takes over we immediately jump to a conclusion and take some action which often backfires. This may involve breaking up with them before they leave us, deleting their pictures, sending them long texts in a fit of rage, announcing it on social media.
6. Self blame/harm, loss of confidence, fear and sadness (post break-up): After each break-up, one may feel hurt, angry and BETRAYED for the longest of times. We question ourselves and ultimately come to a conclusion that “WE JUST WEREN’T GOOD ENOUGH FOR THEM”.
I’ve felt this intensity with every man I’ve been with which makes it even harder for me to cope up. (Even if I’ve dated a man for nearly a month).
I also noticed that even if I genuinely don’t like a person (based on their personality or lack of chemistry between the two) I would still make strong efforts to be with them. Why?
1. Fear of being alone
2. Liking the constant attention, affection.
3. Validation from the other makes us feel more confident.
The immediate reaction after a few days is to seek a new partner to fill in that void.
Although my (visible) reactions to each break-up is changing, the feeling of sadness and betrayal remains high as always. But it’s changing.
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