CW: Sexual assault, suicidal ideation, Self Harm, Abuse, infidelity. Also, I'm *really* sorry for the long post.

So I'm six months out of a relationship with someone who has untreated BPD. In the end it turned out to be really abusive, and I'm just trying to understand all of it. I've joined a few support groups for people in similar situations, but I've run into a bit of concern. I've gotten to talk to a lot of great people, who have given me some great advice, BUT as with any situation like this, many people there are (understandably) hurt and angry. Because I'm not experienced with BPD, sometimes I'm not sure what's true, and what's being said by someone who is angry, still healing, and lashing out. I'd like to get more information on some of the behavior, so that I can avoid having hurtful or damaging views. I'd like to hear from the perspective of someone who has BPD, but all are welcome.

Okay, so, details. We met at my ballroom dance studio. She's in her early 20s and I in my mid 20s, and we spent about 6 months making eyes at each other and wanting to make a move. I finally did on Christmas of 2018. At the time, I had been in the middle of planning a year long, one time work trip to my favorite country. Now, I understand that this hits on a big symptom of BPD: extreme fear of real or imagined abandonment. But I did make it clear that even though it was too late to just drop everything, I really liked (eventually loved) her, that it was a temporary one time thing, and that if she wanted a place in my life, I'd do everything I could to make things work. 

In the six months before I left (one year into knowing her), that's exactly what I did. She had been in a Cinderella/Rapunzel situation with a heavily abusive, narcissistic grandmother who didn't believe in mental illness. I helped her move out, find a therapist, sometimes paid for sessions, spent 14 hours with her at a consultation for depression, visited her every day at CRU, all while avoiding telling my family to avoid pressuring her, even though they wondered where I was. I also helped her work on finding things to do in my absence, so that she could have a healthy balance between time with me and time on her own. We also came to have deep feelings for one another, and about 2ish months in we decided to make things official: we wanted commitment, we wanted monogamy, and what we had was private. That's important for later.

Then I left, and everything went out the window. When I met her, she was relatively constructive, level headed, and logical. When I left, it was like she couldn't understand why I wasn't turning the plane around \*right now\*. Why I wasn't quitting everything I'd been working on for the last year and a half. Suddenly, my entire trip was on the negotiating table. She became highly manipulative, doing everything she could to get me back. The entire time I could tell she wasn't acting like herself, so I just did everything I could to be constructive, and help her get through the worst of it. She eventually returned to normal, even though she was upset. 

In the time that I was waiting for all of my arrival paperwork to go through, I spent virtually all of my time with her. 

I also helped her find and get in contact with her real mom - another long story. When that happened, everything started to look up. I had back up, and she had a safe place to process trauma. But suddenly, everything started to go wrong. Suddenly, she started arguing in a way that seemed really incoherent. She wanted to do things that crossed really hard boundaries. Boundaries that I'd set really early on in our relationship. She wanted to post naked photos online. She wanted non-monogamy when for almost a year, I had been more than enough for her- she treated me like SuperBoyfriend. When I became anxious and upset by it, she blamed my anxiety completely on me..which she *knew* was wrong because for months her therapists and I had been saying so, and she understood. Then she went after my insecurities- which again, she knew was wrong because I'd talked about how I'd never do that to her, and she promised the same. When I asked close friends about it, the word "bullying" came up over and over again. I can't say I disagree. Finally, she started twisting old memories around. Memories that we'd always treated as overwhelmingly positive were suddenly evidence of my sinister behavior. Then, suddenly, why was I babying her? *she's better. There's nothing wrong.* It's almost as if the 10 months where I was constantly doing suicide watch for her didn't exist. The final nail in the coffin was her telling me that her whole family hated me, when in reality they loved me. This was a huge red flag to me, because it was like a pendulum. This led to two weeks of fighting out of the blue, and us breaking up.

Shortly after the break up, I got a text from her mom. Apparently, towards the end she had been manipulating and sexually assaulting her whole family, had cheated on me with a family friend, and was now doing the same to him. This was confirmed by multiple people, and it all fit in with the timeline of events after she became erratic. In order to get closure and to make sure she knew she couldn't manipulate me anymore, I eventually brought it up to her. In the face of overwhelming evidence, she denied the whole thing. Didn't offer any sort of elaborate counter-explanation, just completely contradicted herself and said "no". She even did it in a light, friendly tone, and talked about having good memories of us. She did still insist that the break up was my fault and that I was controlling though.

If what I've read from all of the message boards is to be totally believed, everything that we had was fake and people with BPD are dangerous manipulators. While I can see *some* reason to think that, that seems pretty unfair. At the same time, in a really broad sense, I didn't do anything wrong here. I wasn't perfect, but I was not the cause of our break up. I had reasonable boundaries that she had wholeheartedly, happily agreed to, and if she didn't like them she was free to break up with me at any time. *I was 4,500 miles away, for goodness sake.* Not only that, but I stuck my neck out for 10 months to make sure she got the help she needed. I didn't have a single negative intention, never hurt her, and the vast majority of the time, she would have told you that herself. Can anyone with BPD help me see the mindset here, and the logic?

If you made it all the way through this, thank you so much just for giving it a look. Take care, y'all.