[ExtraTea]

The Cast:
Narrator: College student, entering 4th and final year, living with Brad and 2 other guys for over 2 years.
Brad: Room-mate, very Irish personality. Low ability to express emotion, no interest in contemplating problems, especially interpersonal ones. Much prefers consciously blocking out negative thoughts about situations than finding solutions to situations.
Liz: Girlfriend of Brad, been dating for almost a year. Very very sweet, used to dress quite provocatively until a messy incident last year, very loyal. However, also very dependent on boyfriend, which leads to the plot.

Act I: Prologue
Brad and Liz started dating like the day after they met. This seemed kind of peculiar to me and my my other room-mates because Brad always ranted about how he needs a girlfriend who is actually experienced, has a strong personality, knows who she is, has been around the block a few times. This isn't quite Liz, who oozes "Can I bake someone cookies?" sentiment, and in general says a lot of silly blonde-joke-like things. She's fairly attractive by his standards (not my type, but I can see what he sees in her), so we all figured he was dating her based on appearance and would soon realize her personality isn't what he kept telling us he was looking for.
Skip forward a couple months, they're still dating. Bizarre we think, she's constantly doing the "whose my snuggy wuggy bear" kind of nonsense, towards a guy who by all accounts acts like a straight-faced no-nonsense cop, nor does he seem to find particular appeal to it in this isolated situation.

Act II: Plot
Brad starts to pull away. Everyone's confused why, after all, he always acted like the kind of guy who values close friendships over everything, yet months have gone by with us never hearing anything about his relationship, when we used to always provide advice and share stories.
Then he stops sleeping in our apartment fairly often, opting to sleep in her's nearby. Then he stops buying groceries with us. Then he stops hanging out as much. He stops playing video games with us, drinking with us, going out for food with us. This is all very peculiar to us, because he doesn't seem like the kind who radically changes his ways. Furthermore, he always acted so happy and vocal about how great it was to have an apartment and get to play video games and drink with his friends, yet now he wants none of it?
We can see to some degree what's going on... the typical Hero/Damsel situation. He easily falls victim to the Damsel in Distress type of female, and she happily plays that role. So slowly but surely he has to spend more time down there, leaving her alone for less and less time, until they're joined at the hip. However, Irish as he is, Brad continues to pretend nothing has changed and walks into the apartment time and time again after a week's absence saying "Boy, I sure do need a drink, you guys want some?" as if things were normal. He worked very very very hard to pretend nothing had changed, mostly for his own benefit we imagine. It's probably also why he didn't talk to us about any of this, it'd be admitting it's a problem.

Act III: Failed Interventions
Finally, one of my room-mates and I decided we really needed to talk to him. It appears he's given up everything he loves in life for this girl, yet doesn't appear to be happy for doing so, and it pains us to see a close friend fade away, a friendship die, and a person suffer. So we confront him, sit him down, talk to him in reassuring ways. We're there for you, something is up man, you can talk to us, we can help you. He somewhat opens up a little, tells us all about how she's so anxiety-ridden and so prone to mood swings and she is so easy to upset and she's delicate and he just can't leave her by herself so he's not happy about the situation but he's working on it. We're content so we let it drop, since he openned up and apologized so earnestly so much for how he let us down and how he's going to start hanging out with us again.
Weeks go by... nothing changes. No mention of the conversation again, he continues to pretend neither the conversation nor even the situation occured in his weekly visit. This is getting annoying. The support tactic legitimately worked, but it wasn't powerful enough for him to face her about anything.
Summer starts, and we move to our homes. We hear nothing from Brad. Eventually, I get him on AIM, and push a new tactic-- reality shock. I attempt to throw it all open wide, let him see the contrast that his life has become, all that he's surrendered, so that he can have that reality shock moment and go 'oh dear god, this isnt what i want, i need to do something'. Unfortunately, trying to get him to focus on the situation after all the effort he put into blocking it just angers him (he apologized later) but he did get enraged and numerous times admit he doesn't like how his life is, but it's complicated and he can't just fix it.
Two failed interventions.

Act IV: There's more???
Recently I got a bunch of information from a room-mate of Liz's. Apparently, she's overheard tons of their conversations. Generally, Liz will freak out completely about absolutely nothing. "Have a nice day!" is replied to with something like "You don't love me do you? You don't even want to see me. That's why you said have a nice day. Because you don't want to talk to me all day!". Which turns into Brad, the hero, consoling Liz, the damsel, for the next several hours about how she's perfect, he's so in love with her, he's never been happier (all lies as far as evidence and his angry confessions signal). Then the conversation either turns to her being so upset that their relationship is so bad and she's wasted so much time when he clearly can't support her like she needs supporting, or it turns to her getting so upset that she's like this and ruining his life (which leads to more pacifying about how he's so happy).
More tidbits that pop up from memory. One time last year, concerned as were about what happened to our room-mate, we asked Liz what the hell Brad and her are up to all the time. She has this confused look on her face, like she can't understand. Brad is with you for like 8 hours almost every day. No he's not, he hangs out with you guys a lot. He was just telling me how he played video games with you guys recently. Well... now we have a problem. Because we don't see him more than once a week, and he hasn't played with us in weeks. Is Brad missing? Is he cheating? Everyone, including her, is concerned. Turns out he really is with her that much, she just... didn't know it? And the video game thing, was something she fabricated after Brad said we (room-mates) don't need a game he has because we play another one, so she created an event in her mind of him playing with us.

Act V: So what is he getting at?
First, my room-mate is potentially going to ruin his life, forever. He can't get out of the relationship even if he ran with emotions that come with thinking about how much his life sucks compared to how it was, but that won't even happen because he's so intent on blocking such thoughts. But even if he did think about it long enough, she'd beg and plead and cry and he'd immediately take her back, as any hero does to a damsel in distress. If this continues for another year, he'll move away from us, into an apartment with her for good, and then he's done for life, unhappy as he is now.
Second, this is doing Liz more damage than good. She needs to learn to deal with these problems that she has, rather than find someone whose life she can leech away. It appears to me that she may have Borderline Personality Disorder, but without suicidal tendencies or apparent anger (is it still likely then?). She expresses:
-Very quick to get very committed in a relationship (bought him a pet for them to share after a month of dating)
-Very dependent
-Very afraid of abandonment
-Very mood-swingy
-Lots of cognitive schematic problems like generalization, personalization, black & white, etc. The full spectrum of thought disturbances
-Including possible dissociation or something?? How did she honestly not know where he is all the time, and how did she just magically make a memory? It may not seem strange the way I wrote it but it was a very awkward and surreal situation.
-Sex-related severe traumatic experience in adolescence
-Neglectful in emotions but overbearing in rules parents
-Incredible anxiety and low self-esteem
-But she uses dissapointment and sadness and anxiety instead of anger, and there is nothing to indicate self-mutilating or suicidal tendencies.
-Previous abusive boyfriends
-She seems okay when single, and gets increasingly more symptomatic when in relationships.

To me it appears to spell out BPD, but I'm not sure, and I don't know what to do about it. Brad is Irish and doesn't want to change or think, and doesn't trust the idea of therapy or therapists. Meanwhile, neither I nor my room-mates are particularly close to Liz, enough to bring up a topic like therapy, nor do we know anyone who can.
If she has BPD, his hero-complex actions are doing more harm than good. Either way, his life is in a much worse state everytime I talk to him, yet it just leads to stronger blocking of thoughts and more resistence to talking about it.
Help.

PS: Sorry for insanely long post, but I had to get enough situations in there to show various sides of the relationship and Liz's actions, as well as to show that this isn't the kind of issue I should try to help my room-mate and then just drop. Once more, this isn't the kind of issue I'm just going to drop because I failed until now. By all accounts, my room-mate appears to have no capacity whatsoever to fix this. I've seen him in good healthy relationships, but this time he's in an unhealthy trap he can't get out of. If I don't help him, he won't help himself, he'll end up like that typical middle-aged guy who goes to the bar every day after work to drink a couple beers and grumble about "you know how women are...", overall unhappy but too Irish to do anything about it.

So, help! Is it BPD and what do I do?

[StarPonysMama]

WOW - this sounds like by boyfriend's ex girlfriend - LOL! But, this girl I speak about won't be single - she'll have another on the hook before the previous leaves.

I'm not sure what to tell you but it sure is nice of you to look out for your friend. I hope that you guys can figure something out. With this girl.....the boyfriend's ex......her new man.....his friends tried to help him too and even told her to her face that they did not like her because she was pregnant less than a month and half into the relationship (then mercifully lost it), next thing you know this guy abandoned all his friends on account of her. A quite miserable situation for him.

I hope your friend "sees the light" before it's too late.

Life's too short.

Take care.