I've been emotionally exhausted these days. I came to the realization that I may have BPD after extensively reading up on it for weeks. I had been ruminating over the quality of all of my past relationships and how my relationship with my father impacted my life (he passed away last year).

Based on research off of the infonet, BPD individuals tend to couple up with nice guys or people with NPD. According to my personal experience, I ended up with controlling and non-respecting men.

It's frustrating to be stuck in this loop or pattern despite my best efforts to break out of it. My father was verbally and emotionally abusive, alcoholic, domineering, emotionally unavailable, neglectful and lacked empathy. He pretty much ruined all of my siblings' childhoods. The damage he caused still affects us all in our adult lives to this day. Since I was a child, I tried so hard to understand where he was coming from. I wanted to understand how my own father can reasonably treat us the way he did. It was only until last year I realized that he was suffering from a mental illness. I suspect it was a co-occurrence of NPD and BPD at the same time.

My mother, on the other end, has an extremely high tolerance for pain and abuse. I don't even understand how she can go through everything she went through in her life without holding a grudge. She is forgiving to a fault. She was pretty much blind to the abuse being inflicted onto the children and simply put herself in a situation where she was absent from home almost 7 days on 7 to financially support the household.

28 years later, I find myself looking back at a total of 3 romantic relationships that lasted about 3 years each.

My first two ex-boyfriends were douchebags who needed to sow their wild oats despite being in an exclusive relationship. I was basically a clingy girlfriend who re-enacted my mother's ways of tolerating and adapting to my then-boyfriends' inattentive and selfish behavior. I was in school during this time.

The worst breakup was with my last ex. We lived together. During the first year, he was the nice guy who was eager to please. Throughout the course of our relationship (particularly after moving in together), the criticism and unempathetic behavior started trickling in. At the very end, I only realized that he was a narcissist on the day my father died and how he acted afterward. At this point, we were no longer together but still living together. From the day my dad died, he talked to me with a cold tone, did not inquire about my well-being, rolled out coercive controlling tactics during my last days at the apartment when I was moving out. He made everything about him despite what I was going through. I won't get into the details but it was nasty how it went down. I'm still traumatized about it.

Fast forward to 8-9 months later, I began dating again. One guy happened to be a genuinely empathetic nice guy. The idealization phase waned and I broke it off. I think I might subconsciously have domineering side and I need to date a guy who is domineering in order to suppress that dark side of mine, which might be the reason why I can't stand nice guys for too long. However, he keeps clinging hopelessly. I don't understand why he's so persistent.

At the moment, I'm now seeing another guy who is almost the male version of me. I suspect he has BPD and I don't think I can continue this.

Relationships seem kinda hopeless to me at this point. I'm wondering what other people think about dating/relationships as a person who identifies with BPD? If you were able to successfully transition to a healthy relationship, how did you do it? I don't think we all fit into a particular pattern. Your parents definitely play a role in who you're attracted to. Contrary to the stereotype about the nice guy/BPD pairing, I like assholes (and not proud of it).

**TLDR**:

* I sorta became my father (BPD without NPD)
* I tend to not be attracted to nice guys (probably because of my experience with my mother being an overbearing "nice girl" and my father being an asshole)
* I find myself always dating a guy resembling my father (overly-critical, controlling, etc.).
* What's your take on relationships with BPD? If you transitioning into a healthy relationship, how did you do it?