My hopefully not too long winded encounter with BPD

First off, thank you so much for having such a forum devoted to so many things. Other than a long ago education in psychology, I was entirely ignorant as to what BPD is. This is a wonderful place for me to learn the issues that people face, both as persons with BPD or friends and family.

Well, here's my story of my experience with BPD.

I have a male friend of more than a year with whom I grew close. We would talk for hours and he was always curious to learn things. I was never particularly attracted to him - he was not remotely athletic, had long greasy hair and a scraggly beard. Still, he was interesting and we got along well. We are both in our 20s and I'm a little older. He has a very unstable and contentious family situation with him still living in his parents home with several brothers. They all drink and they all have physical fights. I've seen that it is not a very loving or supportive environment. I know my friend was sexually abused by a male relative when he was young and he told me that he was sexually assaulted by a female classmate when he was 15. He has not had an intimate relationship since then, dropped out of high school and has difficulty holding a job.

Not quite six months ago I noticed that he became increasingly needy emotionally and was always asking for more time. When it was time for me to go he would find some way to talk me out of leaving. Often this was some crisis that he had at home or with friends that I would have to calm him down from. I also noticed that many mutual friends stopped interacting with him, citing excessive drama as the cause. Before I knew it, I became his sole source of emotional support.

I am an incurable flirt and I realize now that he misinterpreted that. About three months ago he began to refer to me as his girlfriend and soon thereafter, began to ask for and then demand all of my time and attention. He would go into a jealous rage if I interacted with other men, saying I was "cheating" on him or that he was being "cucked." I would get dozens, sometimes hundreds of texts, messages and videos throughout the day and overnight, professing his undying love and that I was his universe. I tried to be subtle in that there was no romantic relationship, but it fell on deaf ears and just made him more intense. He then demanded that I cease all contact with any male friends and curtail contact with my female friends and other social activities. The fact that I was in a running group with men would throw him into a fit. I would go from his sun and moon to spawn of the devil and back again in an hour. He demanded that I stop working out as there may be men at the gym. It angered him that I work in a field that is 80% male. He told me that he wanted to make it so that we would be each others' sole source of emotional support.

He proceeded to try and alienate my friends and family from me, but only succeeded in doing that to himself. They traded some very nasty encounters to where he was no longer welcome in my social circle. He became the butt of jokes among my friends as well.

He became increasingly sexually aggressive, demanding that I send him racy pictures or submit to him, which I kept deflecting. He would describe in nauseating detail what he was going to do to me and how I would have to satisfy him several times a day. He had some interesting paraphilia, one of which he would want me to be mean to him, which he found arousing, but would break down sobbing if I complied.

He was a bundle of contradictions too. One of which was he was shy and constantly professed having low self esteem, but he could more arrogant than doctors, lawyers and fighter pilots I know. He would go from, he is "nothing" to he is better than any man I had been with in minutes. He could be wise and intelligent, but then incredibly juvenile.

He would craft these "fairy tale romance" scenarios in which I would sweep him off of his feet and take him away from his tumultuous home and care for him entirely, financially, emotionally and physically. Or, that I would abandon my family, friends and career and we would run away together with the same outcome as above. His contribution to the "relationship" would be playing his guitar and doing a few chores. I pointed out that the enormous disparity in our lives would be a huge obstacle to any relationship, hoping he'd focus elsewhere, but it just drove him harder.

So, here's the frightening part. When he would fly into these jealous rages, he would call me all sorts of horrible things and would always threaten self harm or suicide if I withdrew or didn't comply with his demands. He would send me video after video overnight of him destroying his room, screaming obscenities at me, fighting with his family and punching holes in the walls of his home. Other streams of videos or messages were of him sobbing uncontrollably, begging me to be with him and that I was the only one who could help him. These would be followed by more videos and messages of him him giggling and complimenting me. I realized that it wasn't bipolar as I had been with a guy who was bipolar and the emotional dysregulation was too severe and the mood swings too rapid.

Confused and not understanding BPD at the time, I rebelled and began to provoke him. Everything he demanded, I would do the opposite. I would hang out with guy friends, I would workout harder, I would spend more time at work. Of course, this made the tantrums worse. I told him that he was smothering me and that I was overwhelmed by the intensity of his emotions. I told him that I was frightened by the violence of his outbursts. I cited one early morning video in which he beat one of his guitars on the ground for more than half an hour, the thing being just wood and plastic shards and strings for most of it. I begged for space, but it made him more desperate. I begged him to return to therapy, but he said that I was the only one who could heal him.

In a weird revelation, I remembered that I have a graduate degree in clinical psychology and that, maybe, he suffered from some form of mental illness. I even interned as a counselor at an outpatient clinic working with mentally ill clients. However, I was given the opportunity to become a pilot and I never looked back until now. I began researching as much as I could, which led me here. I am grateful for the amount of personal information that people have shown as this has been a reeducation for me.

It's ironic that he could not have chosen a potential romantic partner more poorly. I know my faults and being passive-aggressive is one of them. The harder he pushed, the more I deflected and rebelled. He would video call me in a state of arousal and demand that I comply and I would make fun of him or talk about the weather until it went away. I have a large social circle including a lot of men and I get a fair amount of attention from men, which was a constant flash point. Finally, and most ironic, is that I'm very emotionally blunted. I joke that in a 1 to 10 emotional scale, I'm a 4 to 6. I laugh a lot and am quite humorous, but I don't feel anything intensely. I get angry, but almost never to the point of an outburst. I'm affectionate, but don't really feel love. I can't recall the last time I cried or felt sad. This also drove him into fits, calling me cold and much worse. He would frequently project an emotional state onto me with a high degree of inaccuracy. When I told him I simply don't feel that, he would insist I was lying. He would frequently demand that I cry as well and would do things that he thought would make me cry, to which I would yawn because I'm passive-aggressive. His lack of education or employment were also flash points for me.

Anyhow, that is my short story, long. I am grateful that a forum such as this exists and I have gained a much better understanding of BPD and regained a level of empathy for him, though I am still emotionally exhausted and desirous of a lot of space.

Blessings to you all, Alice