  

I’ve been lurking on this subreddit for a few weeks now. I wanted to post to share my story and get some insight from this community. 

TL;DR – I was dating someone who likely has BPD (undiagnosed) or traits and cheated on me. I am struggling to understand our relationship (what it meant to her, how we got attracted to each other, etc.) and could really use some insight. 

I dated this girl for five years. When we first started out, we were working together and she was cheating on her current boyfriend with me (this went on for over 2 months). She would frequently ask me if she should break up with him and if we would be together if she did. I never committed to that while she was with him because I did not want her to make a major life decision based on that guarantee and I didn’t feel like I could trust her since she was cheating on her current partner. 

Eventually, she broke up with him and immediately started wanting to be with me all the time. It was pretty intoxicating. She put me on a massive pedestal and thought I was perfect in every way. Nothing I did was ever wrong and she even began to emulate some of my mannerisms and vocabulary. A few months later, we decided to become exclusive. She was completely addicted to me. She would freak out if I didn’t respond to her text messages after more than 2 minutes and would get so turned on in the bedroom without me even needing to try. Just the thought of me seemed to make her cum. 

She completely idealized me for a while, and then it just kind of stopped. It wasn’t instant, but it slowed down over the course of a year or two and then it was clear to me that she no longer saw me as this perfect person. She stopped focusing on and caring about the activities and things that made me happy. I was confused and really saddened by her shift in perspective. I began to change and started trying to please her more and make her happy, but nothing I did seemed to work. I tried taking her out to nice dinners and defaulted to whatever she wanted to do whenever we had free time together (before, it was almost always what I wanted to do). 

A little while ago, she started cheating on me. I found out a few weeks later and instantly knew that we were over. I could tell that she was completely obsessed with this other guy in the exact same way that she had been obsessed with me. She barely knew this guy, but he was suddenly her everything. We broke up as soon as I found out. I was devastated and heartbroken. 

After a lot of research, I am pretty sure that she has BPD and I have NPD or some N traits. Neither of us has been diagnosed, but let’s pretend that we have been. I am really struggling now that I know this. I have read a lot about many pwBPD being attracted to pwNPD. I think this dynamic definitely played a part in our thing. I did not know I had NPD and I never consciously meant to treat her poorly, but I definitely did (extreme selfishness, manipulation, insensitivity, gaslighting, refusing to admit I was wrong). I’m ashamed of how I acted, and am working on myself to be better in the future.

I’m here to ask this community a few things: 

1) It seems like I was her FP for a while, even while she was cheating on her ex with me. I didn’t really consciously do much to seduce her, she just kind of seemed to decide this out of nowhere, without really knowing me at all. Any insight into what might have made her choose me as her FP? The level of attraction and commitment was immense for how little we had interacted previously. 

2) Did she ever really love me? Or was this more like a drug thing? 

3) What causes someone to change FPs? Is it related to me, related to this other guy that she switched to, related to both of us, or related to something else entirely? 

4) Are FPs always temporary? Was there any chance that we could have been together forever? Would there always have been a high chance that she would eventually attach to someone else and then cheat again? 

5) As I started to feel her slip away and become less emotionally invested in me, I started trying really hard to please her. I feel like nothing really worked. Is it possible that she was attracted only to the NPD-version of me and was repelled by the more kind and considerate one that cared a lot more about her happiness? The potential for this makes me really sad, because I was starting to realize how selfish and unfair I had been during the relationship and wanted to change (progress was slow though). 

6) She was constantly propping up my ego and loved when other people reacted positively to me. It almost seemed like she formed her opinion of me based on what other people thought of me, which is how I form my opinion of myself (and it makes me sick to know this). It also seemed like she formed her opinion of herself based on what other people thought of me. Does this sound like it might be accurate? Is this common of pwBPD? 

I’m not trying to over-generalize pwBPD or pwNPD, I know that we are all different and aren’t fully defined by our illnesses. I am just trying to understand myself and her a little better and try to make sense of what happened. I’m also trying to be a better person and overcome the negative tendencies of pwNPD that I exhibit. 

Thank you for taking the time to read all this and sharing your thoughts.