Hi,

I’m new here and kind of needed a place to rant/vent/process/whateveryouwannacallit… though I suppose I should probably give a bit of an introduction first.

I’m a 30 year old woman with BPD. I’ve been in therapy from age 16 but only learned about the BPD a few years ago (when it finally occurred to me to ask). My mother passed away over 2 years ago and I’ve been living on my own ever since. Last time I had any kind of bf was about 3 years ago and last time I had an IRL one was over 4 years ago.

You couldn’t imagine 3 men that could possibly be any more different from each other than the guys in the last 3 relationships I was in… and yet they each taught me (in very different ways and for different reasons) that I wasn’t emotionally ready for relationships… So I took a break from men, relationships, love, sex and all that for the past 3 years and figured I’d try again when I felt ready. My therapist occasionally tried to nudge me in the direction of looking for a relationship again but I kept telling her that I didn’t feel ready yet.

Anyway, in the past few months it so happens I’ve had the opportunity to chat on the job with some people at my work place… and one of them so happens to be male, straight and single and it so happens we have similar taste when it comes to some TV shows, books and movies. He’s very intelligent and has a decent sense of humor, both of which I find essential in a guy.

So (figuring that he seems like a good candidate and that maybe I’ve waited enough) for the past couple of months I’ve used every opportunity I could get to try and chat with him and get to know him. He’s an extremely introverted guy and it’s taken a long time to get him interested in chatting back. At first I didn’t have a problem with the slow pace because I’m normally introverted too and also frankly felt quite scared and unsure about having a relationship with anyone.

Realizing that this might lead to a relationship, I’ve spent the past month doing some intense work (both in therapy and with myself) to try and deal with some related childhood traumas that I’d rather not discuss at this point yet. The result of this was that recently I’ve actually found myself starting to yearn for a relationship again, which is something I hadn’t felt in years… and – wouldn’t you know it – together with that came something else I hadn’t felt in years – all the BPD crap!

A couple of weeks ago I started feeling the first pangs of a kind of emotional roller coaster ride, only back then it was still fairly weak and mild. Basically – he’d smile at me and I’d think “he likes me!” and feel happy, then the next day or even the same day he’d frown or appear to ignore me and I’d think “he doesn’t like me!” and I’d get slightly depressed. Right from the beginning I was aware that this was just the BPD talking and that I was being ridiculous but I figured that with time, self-awareness and self-control it would get better.

Well… it didn’t get better, it got worse. The highs got higher and the lows got much lower. Today I had a difficult time concentrating at work because I had to smile and act natural while fighting the urge to scream, cry and/or walk out and say I’m quitting and kept having them good ole’ intrusive thoughts about how my life worth nothing, going nowhere and I should just kill myself… and all this was basically because he’d appeared cold/distant the other day (and mind you – we hadn’t even started any kind of relationship yet… we haven’t even hinted at asking each other out yet… we hadn’t even gotten to the point of being freaking buddies yet).

Anyway, on top of that, I appear to have pretty much devaluated him today. We hadn’t had a chance to interact at all (fortunately) but I found myself resenting him for literally no reason what so ever, I lost all inclination to want to start something with him and by the end of the day he actually appeared less physically attractive.

The other disturbing thing is that I spent the day trying to decide whether I wanted to A) continue perusing him, B) stop perusing him and continue to stay alone, or C) start perusing somebody (anybody!) else … figuring that things might be easier with a relatively less cold/introverted guy. What makes this disturbing isn’t the thoughts themselves but the fact that I wasn’t able to decide which of these 3 options felt more “right” and as time went by I felt more and more frantic about finding the “right answer”.
In the end, as soon as I got home I called up a guy on the building committee pointing out to him that I owed him money and so he said he’d meet me on Wednesday to collect it… and the only reason I did that was that the guy’s shown interest in me in the past and on Wednesday I have every intention of asking him out! (on the probably slim chance that I still feel then the way I do now that is…).

It’s been a long, long time since the last time I’ve felt this impulsive and out of control and it’s especially freaking me out because it’s all happening this early. I haven’t even had a chance to get to the starting point with the guy at work before I got to the devaluation stage. I thought I was stronger and more stable than this…

I do know that he’s not a bad guy at all, he’s a very, very decent guy, but I just find him too intimidating.