This is something I've felt for a long time but only recently realized my BPD plays a role in it.

I've always felt really insecure about, uh, not being super secure. I've had a few really long-term and significant romantic relationships (3 years and 4.5 years, and 9 months and counting for this most recent one) and each time I've worked a little harder at maintaining my own independence. Hell, two of these relationships have involved long-distance time. I've also lived in my own apartment, paid my own rent and bills, I have good credit, and I was able to seek help for my illness and come to terms with it mostly on my own. I have held down a full-time job and now do the same job basically full-time as a freelancer, and I live with my partner where I still pay my own share of rent and bills. I also have my own passion (poetry), and pursue it and succeed and that brings me a lot of fulfillment.

But as a woman especially, and as one surrounded by other women whose priority seems to be their Career and these other more concrete, intellectual things, I still feel silly and childish for deriving so much of my satisfaction in life from my romantic relationships. Even when I'm working to have healthy boundaries and doing really well managing my life/disorder, I always feel like I'm not a whole person because I will never derive as much satisfaction from those things as I do from my relationships with other people. Maybe it's partially me internalizing the stigma of BPD, and maybe also holding myself to some ridiculous golden standard of being a Perfect Feminist. But I was wondering if anyone else feels this same guilt for not being able to feel as fulfilled on their own as they do with other people, and if anyone has ways of moving through/past it.