I'm in a really difficult situation now and I'm feeling a bit upset. I got into a serious disagreement with someone I am/was working on a project with, and who I was also sexually involved with. He's male, I'm female, and he's much older than I am, and he's in a kind of "expert" position in this project, essentially founded it, while I joined in fairly recently. He's much better known and more respected in our network than I am. I'm saying all this to point out the blatant inequalities in our relationship, because I think it's relevant.

Essentially - and this is *my* version of the story, of course - he (it felt like) out of the blue sent me an e-mail full of accusations about me playing a "catch me if you can game", "running zig zag" and not being able to "stay in one place". I don't doubt I might play out those patterns, but I asked him to give me concrete examples of when he thought I was doing that, otherwise it just felt like being attacked without a chance to reflect on it.

What then started was a super-long chain of e-mails where he would tell me I was "sidetracking" and "focusing on details in order to create fog" whenever I asked him to just fucking *explain* what he meant when he said all those things about me, because I very simply couldn't see it from my perspective. Soon, the word came, and was repeated several times over - borderline, borderline, borderline.

I did freak. At one point, it became more important to keep the relationship from falling apart than it was to retain clarity or emotional balance. That's when I became contradictory, yes, surrendered to his arguments at one point then the next second rebelled against it. Finally, he sent the last two e-mails I sent him, which were the crazier ones, one of them explicitly saying "I'm freaking out right now, I'm very unstable, I can't hold this on my own" and begging for help, to three other of our friends.

Now I feel like everything I do gets the label "borderline" attached to it, and if I try to explain my side of the situation, everyone just focuses on how they can be symptoms of BPD rather than - how must that have felt for me? Do they understand my point, if they see it from my perspective? None of that.

I'm not sure how to deal with the situation now. I resent that I feel like I had a valid point to make, about him levering unfair accusations at me, and going about discussing it in what I feel was a very unfair, manipulative way. (But of course calling others "manipulative" can only be a symptom of BPD, not a rational observation), and my point gets dismissed in favour of everyone telling me that I'm not mentally healthy and I need to cool off.

Yes, I have a personality disorder. It's not who I am. It doesn't mean I can't think rationally ever, it doesn't mean that everything I live and feel is a delusion.

I guess the main thing I'm confused about now is how am I supposed to ask for support from those people. I don't want to go into just defending myself, and I do genuinely believe they want to support me, they just don't know how. And I don't even know what I need from them, other than I guess just seeing my point as well as they see his point. They tell me "he might have been wrong, but that's not what matters" but no one tells him "she might have been wrong, but that's not what matters". The least I would expect is an acknowledgement that I didn't create all this on my own, because I honestly don't think it's possible I did.

I'm angry that I freaked out, because it just gives him ground to stand on and say I'm crazy and I don't know what I'm talking about ever. But I'm also angry that me freaking out invalidates everything else about me.