I have quite a history of unstable and negative relationships. I used to have a pattern of carelessly getting into relationships and either not putting my all into them or breaking up with them pretty quickly. This is awful I know, but my relationships just aren’t normal. I call this “relationship hopping.” Just getting into relationships that I don’t really need nor even desire, just to fill a void. I hate that about myself. I really do.

I’ve only been in a few actually meaningful relationships, and all times they’ve left me. My relationships aren’t all meaningless; now, I get into relationships if I genuinely have an interest in the person, not just when an opportunity arises. But in my relationships that I really do care about, they’re very bittersweet because my BPD tends to really act up and get in the way. The person becomes my FP, and I start having panic attack after panic attack over the smallest little things I find, and if they’re in a bad mood I take it as they’re mad at me and about to leave me. These panic attacks get so bad that I’ll feel physically sick to my stomach and exhausted. They’re inconsolable. And if the FP does leave, then I end up in a mental health crisis and lose my will to live. This is the usual process. Deep, profound sorrow and suffering first, and then eventually the pure rage follows.

I was broken up with in early March, with a girl I really thought I had a future with. Needless to say, she was my FP. She literally left me with zero explanation. She broke up with me through text. When I asked for an explanation and for her to call me, she didn’t even text back, never bothering to even call me. I was broken up with, and I had no idea why. Our relationship was going amazing. Out of nowhere she just left. To put the icing on the cake, just days prior, she told me she had a miscarriage. Dumped me for no reason a few days later. This sent me into a downward spiral. That night, I had such a severe panic attack that I couldn’t eat dinner. I totally lost my appetite. I had to take Ativan to calm me down, and then went up to my room and proceeded to call my friend, where I sobbed to her that my girlfriend had broken up with me, hinted that I was feeling suicidal, and that I had no idea what to do anymore. She was very supportive, and stayed on the phone with me for 2 hours, until the Ativan kicked in and I was in a very calm state. That was just the start of it. I had a severe nervous breakdown, with a whole range of symptoms, both mental/emotional and physical. I didn’t start to recover from it until about a month and a half later. Until then, I just got worse every day. I really felt like I had nothing to live for anymore. Nobody could pull me out of it. I nearly had to be hospitalized on many occasions. Last time we talked, it was May and she acted like nothing ever happened. I was deeply hurt. She broke my heart. Now, the sadness has turned to rage, and I have fits of extreme anger whenever I think about what she did to me.

I’m currently in a relationship with a girl I really do love. We haven’t been together for a long time, but we really love each other. At first, I didn’t wanna get too close. I didn’t talk to her much throughout the day and questioned whether I should stay in the relationship. I was very neutral toward her. I liked her, but at the same time was very paranoid and suspicious. I’m always like this at the beginning of relationships. The second I ask someone out, I immediately question whether I made the right decision. I maintain a “don’t get too close” attitude for a short period of time before I can no longer keep up that wall and end up allowing myself to fall deeply for that person and getting overly attached.

I’m at the point where I’m totally in love with my girlfriend. She has become my FP and now I’m very attached. She’s the main thing on my mind all day. We Skype every night, and the only reason we’d previously missed a few nights is because she had mono and physically couldn’t talk because her throat was so sore. She is one to take things slow, but we said “I love you” after a week because this is just different. This isn’t unusual for me. I tend to take things quickly. We literally already talked about having kids together in the future.

This next part might be TMI, so just a warning.
At the beginning of the relationship, I was very distant and uncertain. The first time we hung out, I was literally shaking and wasn’t too interested in much. Even the thought of kissing her was overwhelming for me. But it didn’t take too long for me to warm up to her. Knowing I can be impulsive, I told her I want to wait a while before we have sex, and to stop me if I started to go too far. Unsurprisingly, I ended up wanting to do it (and she did too), but she had the self control not to go against my wishes. At this point, though, I’m more than willing to have sex with her. I really do love her. I feel like we’re missing a key component of intimacy if we don’t have sex. I know that’s not necessarily true, but that is how I feel. We cuddle, kiss, make out, hold hands, hug, and we do some sexual things but not all the way yet. I’m only concerned about it because I’m sure it’ll cause me to be even more attached and clingy (if that’s even possible). I’m so in love that I’m literally ready to start trying for a baby now.......and we both just graduated from high school.

I AM the jealous type. I try hard not to let it show, or if I do, it’s done in a joking manner. It’s very easy to trigger jealousy in me, even outside of a relationship. I struggle a LOT with feelings of entitlement, so I end up feeling jealous a lot, for even the most outlandish things.

Being in love (or, at least, the feeling of extreme idealization) is quite bittersweet. You feel amazing when you think about them......that is, until your mind convinces you there’s a problem and that they’re gonna leave you.

I’m always overanalyzing everything. Every word she says, I keep a mental note of. The way she texts me. How often she texts me. Her tone of voice when talking to me. Whether she says certain things that I expect (i think it goes with the entitlement issue that I have unrealistic expectations of others which leads to me being dissatisfied and devaluing them). How she says certain things. Her body language when she’s around me. Literally everything means something......or at least, my brain leads me to believe every little innocuous thing means there’s an issue. Often, my mind just creates things. As I’ve heard others say before, if you look hard enough for a problem, you’re gonna find one: whether it’s actually there or not.

I often find myself over-apologizing. We’ll be joking and I’ll say something a little rude (in a joking manner, of course) but tongue-in-cheek, she will jokingly say “I see how it is” or something and I’ll get all serious and start apologizing profusely (non jokingly). We speculate that this is due to recent abuse by a narcissist that I’m still recovering from, but also has a direct link to my fear of abandonment. She’s trying to break me out of it. As an example, she pretended to jokingly be mad at something and I reflexively started saying I’m sorry. She told me, “see? It’s just an instant, automatic thing for you. There’s nothing to be sorry about.”
Apologizing in excess isn’t anything really new for me, but lately I find myself apologizing to her multiple times a day for no apparent reason, or for reasons I can’t help (like if I have a bad moment or emotional episode). I’ll apologize, she’ll ask what I’m sorry about, and I’ll say I don’t know, and she ends it with “exactly. See? Nothing to be sorry about.” This is a common exchange between us.

If anything in our routine is off, I’ll go off the deep end into a state of panic, thinking “yep, this is it. She’s realized what a horrible person I am and she’s leaving me.”
As I said earlier, we Skype every night. We typically end up Skyping from around 9 or 10 (but recently it’s been later because I’ve been taking forever to do all the things I need to before bed, lol) until the early hours of the morning. She tells me that my voice is calming, and she has trouble sleeping if we don’t Skype. Last night, she asked to have a night to herself without Skyping because she had a particularly awful day and just needed time alone to clear her head. She assured me that it had absolutely nothing to do with me, but my mind started racing. “What if she’s trying to distance herself from me slowly before she leaves me?” “Is she gonna break up with me?” “She hates me. I’m not surprised....seems like everyone ends up hating me after they get to know me.” “What if this is the start of us never Skyping again?”
However, she continued to text me throughout the night during the times we usually would Skype. I had a major emotional episode shortly after she asked me for a night off from Skype. I was already feeling shitty before, but that tipped me over the edge. I started crying and having trouble stopping and catching my breath because I was so hysterical. I kept repeating to myself how I was unlovable and unworthy of anything, and was feeling suicidal. I’ve been getting more self harm urges and depressive episodes over the past week. I suspect it’s due to the fact that Summer is coming to an end and I’m starting college later this month which is throwing off my mental state, but my crippling fear of abandonment seems to be the main issue.

Tonight, when it came time that she usually says she’s ready to Skype, she didn’t say she was ready. I jokingly said, “I’m not ready to Skype yet btw lol” because I typically take a long time to put down what I’m doing, shower and then Skype. She said she wasn’t either. I asked if she still wanted to Skype later, and she said sure. This made my heart drop to my stomach. I replied, “that didn’t sound too enthusiastic, lol” and she said “my bad.”
I sensed that she might be mad at me or something, and I went into real panic mode. I started to feel nauseous, started shaking, and my mind raced. I listened to sad songs, already mourning the inevitable breakup. I cried for a short period of time, but not much since I feel almost numb at this point.

When we finally did Skype, she sounded really unusual. Something just felt off. She wasn’t acting like herself. Her tone of voice was angry/depressed. She has bipolar disorder, and I’ve seen some of her manic highs and rock bottom lows (and she’s seen mine), but this time I was very concerned. I fought the urge to start asking for reassurance.

Eventually she started talking normally. She apologized for not Skyping the night before, and I said it was okay and that I understood. We started joking around as we usually do, but I remained on edge and vigilant for any little signs that something was amiss. I know it has nothing to do with me, but I still worry. It’s just what I do.

Does anybody else experience this? I’m hesitant to even post this, for fear of judgment. But as far as I’ve seen, this community is very accepting, loving and non judgmental. I just don’t wanna come off as a monster or anything. I mean, the stigma attached to BPD already (falsely) states that we’re all monsters and apparently a diagnosis of BPD or having borderline traits takes away your human card and your rights to be treated like any other human. I know we all are anti-stigma, so I hope this post doesn’t get taken the wrong way. I’m so afraid I’m wording something wrong or making myself out to seem worse than I am. I don’t want it to come off that way, I really don’t, I just want to vent without having to sugarcoat. Also, I have multiple other diagnoses alongside BPD, so maybe not everything in this post is easy to relate to. Can anyone relate?