[QUOTE=ID010471;6825399]Someone with BPD (or EUPD as it is in the UK) being with someone with NPD seems now an inescapably disastrous combination. I could liken it to one person going out and drinking both coffee and alcohol all day and not expecting to feel very odd indeed after a couple of hours.

I wonder really then if being with someone with NPD for any length of time would start to tip someone relatively well balanced towards very many BPD characteristics. Would a well-balanced person walk away sooner, or would they be 'strong' enough to be more tolerant?)

I was not 'with' the woman with NPD that I met (actually two, one two years ago and one in 1993) but I did fall for them very intensely, with even the one from decades back still having some power over me. Both rejected me, but in the case of the second woman I enjoyed her enough that I pursued a friendship, which had appeared to be working for a couple of months until I realised I was being lied to and messed around.

And that's where my view comes from, I think - it's all very well being intensely aware that NPD begins with trauma, and that you react with compassion to this, but if they are not receptive to constructive criticism, if they can't accept their own wrongdoing, then the experience of trying to help them is going to pull you in indefinitely. I recently watched the excellent but heartbreaking recent film System Crasher, about a traumatised 9-year-old. The ending of that film is a non-ending deliberately, because the apparent hopelessness of this girl's future should provoke kindness, and prick the conscience of parents. The consequences of abuse and trauma are so powerful that there will often never be closure or healing, so this film wants people to be aware of what they create in their self-indulgence.

I think the woman I knew 25 years ago's narcissism has abated to some extent because she ended up having children, a little bit late, with one of them I think having some kind of neurological difference as a likely genetic result (also drug use was something familiar to the woman and her partner, believing themselves Bohemian types above any notion of consequences). Motherhood has almost miraculously taken this woman out of herself, to an extent. She is still very self-involved and has been able to leave them for work abroad many times, despite her own trauma beginning with the same 'abandonment' carried out by her own father. The woman I met two years ago was told at 17 she can't have children. I think that and a couple of other things compounded her early trauma, and has basically made her unreachable. I remain extremely saddened by this. In our last ever conversation, before I realised she has NPD, I defended myself finally from her self-indulgent behaviour and was assertive about her denial of obnoxious acts. As a result she has seemingly now put me in the demon category. I had been very good to her, but now by defending myself, by being assertive - and quite gently too, no swearing, no shouting - I've at least in terms of how her mind works broken the object constancy. And I suppose that's what seems so hopeless, that either you put up with the manipulation and you let her distorted perception rule or you put your foot down and then are discarded.

I've planted a seed though. I've walked away, very sadly, but I've said things she needs to hear. If others say the same things in the years to come maybe she will eventually be hit by awareness and if not overcome with the grief of the lateness of this awareness she might be able to turn the corner.

I'm fully aware that if I did not have sufficient BPD/EUPD traits I might have handled things better. Paradoxically, perhaps, learning that things were not my fault non-stop has helped taper off my emotional irregularity. I feel mentally more or less on top of the situation, knowing not to take what happened personally - because there is no 'personally' for this woman- even if it will still be some time before the sadness has died down.

How many of us though, if they know that certain combinations of personalities or disorders cannot work, would act on that knowledge and give up before there was damage? We go through life not knowing enough about the nature of love, and the potential of love, the way our conception of love evolves, and our ignorance there complicates things further. In all honesty I would still do whatever I could for this woman to enable her to come to the realisations she needs, and I know there is nothing in that for me other than knowing I did good.

This is a very articulate post I think, describing some of the dynamics that can occur between someone with NPD and someone with BPD or traits of BPD.

''inescapably disasterous combination''... I think both my parents had NPD and one of them had another ''personality disorder''.. I don't think someone with NPD and another person with NPD have a long term relationship as frequently as someone with NPD and someone with BPD or traits of that. (of course, I could easily be wrong. Their marriage did not last long.. at least without him having multiple affairs and marrying someone else )

''knowing that you did good'' - something the step maternal unit said to me.... she very rarely offered ''pearls of wisdom'' but one of the only two pearls of ''wisdom'' she offered me was ''when you look back on your life...'' ... blah blah. Well, mostly when I look back on my ''adult'' life I feel that I mostly tried to do ''good'' to others and not ''bad''... (in fact the same was true when I was a cub but due to severe neglect and abuse I was as clueless in some ways then as the parental units were

Thanks for sharing.