Hi everyone! A little bit of background on myself (F30) and my boyfriend (M26): we've been seeing each other for almost 6 months, we're currently in a ENM relationship, and we met after a major but peaceful breakup of mine with my previous long term partner, another pwBPD. Now, my current partner is not officially diagnosed, but he exhibits all traits I would expect from someone with BPD, which are quite easy for me to recognize at this point, after my previous relationship. I think the main difference between these two partners is that my ex had quiet BPD, while my current partner's symptom are more externalized. This would not be an issue per se, I always do my best to not take things personally and not make things escalate, but it almost feels impossible. I feel like most things I do make him irritable, and whenever they accumulate a little bit, irritation turns into full blown anger outbursts that often involve him harming himself. This breaks my heart everytime, and I sometimes try to physically keep him from doing these things to himself, but sometimes he gets straightforward mean. Unfortunately, I suffer from mental health issues (mostly cluster C) myself, and my anxiety and abandonment issues make it hard for me to not take things personally, or just swallow whatever he throws at me (figuratively) until he calms down. Sometimes I get angry back at him, or I start crying and feeling hurt and confused, and that's when things escalate the most, because I must always be the one to keep the situation from escalating. The following are a couple of episodes that kind of worried me while they were happening, but which I think I am trying to avoid talking about with anyone out of fear for their comments on the situation:

\- Late at night, we're both tired, stressful day, especially for him: he wakes me up involuntarily because he wants to eat, and when I start talking to him he's angry and upset. This makes me angry and upset in turn, because I'm sleepy and don't understand what I did to deserve being treated like that out of the blue. Things escalate, we fight, he threatens to break my phone and tries to grab it from my hands, I get even more upset at his threat, he starts hurting himself, I try to stop him, things escalate, we apologize and make peace.

\- I join him and his other partner for morning sex (after spending the night together) after they already started. He gets frustrated at me because I'm not moving the way he wants me to (he is communicating this physically, but not vocally), so he then gets angry at me while I feel vulnerable laying in bed naked and being criticized, and things escalate again because I start dressing up to leave. This left me feel a little bit violated.

These are a few instances, and probably the ones I felt the most threatening, but there is something going wrong every single day, and I feel like no matter what I do, it's never enough. I apologize so much for everything already, I feel like at this point I'm a shaky, anxious, apologizing machine. He apologizes too when he wrongs me, the problem is, he doesn't always take full responsibility for his actions. He's happy to apologize, but also to justify himself on a constant basis. I know he doesn't do any of these things on purpose, but they still have an impact on me, and I want to be able to be less affected by this and more supportive of him.

One last thing I would like to add is that he suffers from other mental health conditions that make things particularly overwhelming for him, and he can be a sweet and caring partner. I am still in this relationship because I love and care about him deeply, and it breaks my heart to see him suffer. The problem is, I want to avoid suffering too, and I sometimes feel like I've thrown myself into this surreal situation in which I am trying to figure out whether I am being emotionally abused or not.

I know the summary of everything is probably very confusing and it lacks details. Unfortunately I cannot include 6 months of relationship in a post, but I'm grateful to whoever reached this point and is willing to provide some advice :)