Was just watching a psychologist's lecture on BPD and abandonment. He mentioned how our fear of abandonment ends up manifesting actual abandonment. He didn't go into the nuances, so I'm a little bit confused.

I was thinking about my own experiences while dating, and no matter how I acted with them (chill, reserved, clingy, etc), they always ended up ghosting/rejecting me. I've never had a real relationship because of it. **It's gotten to a point where I don't really fear abandonment anymore, I just expect it to happen eventually.**

Ok, for example... when I first started dating, I ended up trying to date a friend. He would go from 'you're the best!' to rejecting me... only to circle back a couple days later. I don't quite remember the details (thankfully), but he would just compliment me tons one day, only to resort to insulting me the next. Despite all this crap treatment, I still clung onto him, and about a month later he said he wanted to be in a relationship. It's important to mention I had no self-esteem and hated myself at this time.

That 'relationship' lasted a literal 2 weeks, because this guy ended up moving away. He ghosted me (despite saying we would try long distance), and it took me a while to get over that. But I can't honestly attribute 'fear of abandonment' causing abandonment in that situation... because the dude literally moved away. 

Fast forward to university, I met another guy (he was 4 years older, so I can't reduce this to possible immaturity like with the first guy) who slowly started to treat me in exactly the same way as the other guy. I was super kind to him, I tried to be myself around him, and I would make my interest obvious.

   
But he would oscillate between matching that energy to soft-rejecting me. Sometimes in a span of only 2 days. The most benign example: some days on our way to class we'd be walking super close; but other times, he'd be trying to **obviously** get away from me (i.e walking far apart on the grass, moving away to walk beside our other friend). He would go from flirting heavily in class one day, to completely ignoring me the next. Even when I tried to talk to him directly.

I can't honestly say that I acted any differently during these times?

We stopped talking after our class finished, but around 8 months later, he contacted me during the pandemic. We exchanged maybe 5-10 texts in this time period before he cut the conversation. Then he came back the next month to do the same, and the month after that, and well, you get the idea.   
He finally asked me on a date a few months ago, and it actually went SO well. He was talking about a relationship and kept mentioning a future together, it was like my dream come true.

But then he didn't text much after that. I was kind of worried he was ghosting/not actually interested, so I mentioned another time and place just to see what he'd say. He sent me this big long text about how he (suddenly) wasn't ready for a relationship, but was still down for going out. I didn't bother responding because it just felt like he was getting one last rejection in.

...

It just gets to a point where I expect/anticipate bad treatment. Whenever someone treats me well, it's like I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop and get rejected. And so far, that is always what happens. I don't know if I do anything to prompt this... with this most recent guy, I tried to stay level headed and not go to the extremes of clinginess or coldness. 

I've started to correlate me showing too much interest with rejection. But even when I'm chill and take things slow, it still happens lmao. Could a 'fear' of abandonment transmogrify into 'expectation' of abandonment and yield the same end result??

I haven't gone in depth about this with my therapist yet, but she said that I seem to be attracted to poor treatment (won't get into childhood details, but yeah), but at the same time I'm getting better at setting good boundaries. Hmm.

I was wondering if anyone has had a therapist talk about this, or if you've heard anything similar?